Netflix’s Squid Game has recently topped the streaming service in terms of its most popular show of all time, across the globe.
For those not in the know, the South Korean show follows financially destitute people who are recruited by a shadowy organization to compete in a contest for a life-changing sum in a series of children’s games, but if a contestant loses at any of the games, they die.
The series is proving to be a whip-smart allegory on class disparities and late-stage capitalism, with the organization itself resembling a totalitarian regime run by faceless soldiers. The puppeteers behind the madness turn out to be reclusive billionaires, however, who bet on the people in the contest like a gambling addict bets on horses.
One of the characters in the show is even a North Korean defector trying to free her family. But ironically, North Korea itself is now using its propaganda machine to criticize the country of South Korea and how it is run, according to The Washington Post.
According to the report, a North Korean state-run website described the show as one that highlights the “beastly” nature of “South Korean capitalist society where mankind is annihilated by extreme competition.”
The post went on to say that Squid Game reflects an “unequal society where the strong exploit the weak.”
Concluding the 1953 Korean War with an armistice but no peace treaty, North and South Korea are still technically at war to this day.
While North Korea fancies itself as an egalitarian paradise, it’s in fact a totalitarian regime whose population is widely burdened by poverty and food shortages, with small circles of wealth for those who have a connection to their ruling party, lead by Kim Jung Un. As a result, many have been driven to flee across the border into South Korea, as is depicted in the show.
You can watch all nine episodes of Squid Game on Netflix right now.