Late at night on December 26, a topic titled “The settings of ‘Squid Game 2’ female characters” was published on the Korean forum “theqoo”, drawing attention.
The topic cited a review on “Squid Game 2” from a media site, which pointed out a major flaw of this season – the lack of colors in female characters, especially when compared to the male ones.
According to this review, while the number of female characters in “Squid Game 2” has increased compared to Season 1, these characters are essentially reduced to “mothers”, “people about to become mothers”, or “people who were once mothers”.
In particular, Geum-ja (Kang Ae-sim) participates in the game to help her gambling-addicted son, only to face the son as a fellow participant. Jun-hee (played by Jo Yuri) loses everything due to her boyfriend’s betrayal and is on the verge of becoming a single mother, while No-eul (played by Park Gyu-young), is a defector and former soldier who left her young daughter in North Korea and doesn’t even know if she’s alive.
In comparison, female characters from the previous season of “Squid Game”, such as the cunning and manipulative Han Mi-nyeo (played by Kim Joo-yeong), Kang Sae-byeok (played by Jung Ho-yeon) who formed a life-and-death friendship with another contestant and hoped to rescue and reunite with her family, and Ji-yeong (played by Lee Yoo-mi) who killed her abusive step-father, seem to deserve higher praise simply due to diversity.
At the same time, the female character with the most intriguing story ended up being Hyeon-joo (played by Park Sung-hoon), a transwoman who participates in the game for gender confirmation surgery. However, this was because his role also entails the male sphere – raising serious questions about the ability to write females of the director.
Netizens seem to agree with the aforementioned view, leaving rather scathing comments regarding the matter.
Below are some comments from netizens:
- They only sexualize single women and have absolutely no interest in unmarried women. This is how this country and its dramas are.
- The character settings are really crappy
- It’s really annoying to see women only as mothers…
- That damn maternal love trait. It really seems that they cannot write female characters without mentioning maternal love, you couldn’t draw female characters. And yet there really aren’t any male characters that emphasizes paternal love
- The female characters in the previous season of “Squid Game” weren’t mothers, and yet Season 2 turned to propaganda.
