In the macabre South Korean series, contestants are invited to ring a number in order to take part in a children’s game, with losing resulting in death. A businesswoman in Seongju, south-east South Korea, claims she has received a deluge of calls and texts from fans of the show enquiring about taking part in the horror competition. She told Money Today she had been receiving thousands of texts and calls to her phone “to the point that it’s hard for me to go on with daily life”. The woman said: “This is a number that I’ve been using for more than ten years, so I’m quite taken aback. There are more than 4,000 numbers that I’ve had to delete from my phone. “At first I didn’t know why, but my friend told me that my number came out in Squid Game and that’s when I realised.” It is claimed the woman has rejected offers of compensation of up to five million won. Netflix has not confirmed if it has paid out compensation to the woman – but has urged fans of the show to refrain from calling the number. It said in a statement: “Together with the production company, we are working to resolve this matter, including editing scenes with phone numbers where necessary.” The Korean series has been tipped to become the streaming giant’s biggest show to date. The creepy hyper-violent series premiered on the service last month and sees 456 desperate contestants compete with each other in the mysterious and deadly survival game. They must compete in multiple rounds of games in a bit to win the top prize of almost KSh 300 million. In each game, the characters take on a traditional children’s game such as Red Light, Green Light. Viewers have been left sickened by the gory scenes in the horror-thriller series, but it has become a global sensation and topped the charts as the number one show in many countries, including Kenya. It has been described as a horrifying version of Takeshi’s Castle, and some fans even questioned whether the dystopian show, which sheds light on staggering wealth inequalities, was in fact real. Now, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos has said that it will “definitely be our biggest non-English-language show in the world”.
