456 people dressed in green tracksuits are placed on a giant chessboard. They gamble with their lives for a seemingly grand reward of 45.6 billion won. Yet behind the illusion of fairness, every participant, every guard, and even the viewers beyond the screen are merely pieces in the hands of the system, their distant gazes absorbed as part of its design. When one season ends, a new game begins. Violence is repeated, repackaged, and sold again. This is the very reality that Squid Game reveals, a system that commercializes both violence and humanity. Across its three seasons, Squid Game no longer frames itself as a story of heroic resistance to a dehumanizing game structure. Instead, it turns violence into a consumable moral spectacle by pulling even its most humane characters into its rules. Seong Gi-hun’s crossing the line into killing is not presented as growth but as a deliberate removal of him as a “pure resistor,” allowing the game’s violent logic to persist and remain marketable ...
I want to share a poem by Bob Kaufman titled “Believe, Believe.” Although this poem was written decades ago, its warning remains deeply meaningful for what is happening in our society today. “Believe in this. Young apple seeds, in blue skies, and electric cities.” Excerpt from “Believe, Believe” by Bob Kaufman (© 1996 Eileen Kaufman, Coffee House Press). Full poem available at Poetry Foundation . The author’s creative background was shaped by the Cold War era, following the rise of McCarthyism. At that time, the whole country went through an “anti-communist witch hunt.” Opposing communism was indeed beneficial to America, and as someone who comes from a communist country myself, I understand the many evils of that system. However, during that period, anyone suspected of “sympathizing with communism” or having “left-leaning ideas” could be investigated, lose their job, or be blacklisted. The author was one of the rebellious young poets known as the Beat Generation. Throug...