The director of Netflix’s hit series Squid Game has claimed that former president Donald Trump bears a resemblance to the show’s villainous VIPs.
The eight-part Korean thriller focuses on an elaborate competition in which debtors are pitted against each other in a series of deadly children’s games.
Towards the end of the show, we are introduced to the “VIPs” – wealthy thrill-seekers who observe the games in luxury, making bets on potential winners and losers.
They are even seen wearing gold masks – a colour Trump is known to favour.
Speaking to IndieWire, Squid Game director Hwang Dong-hyuk said (via a translator): “I conceived of the theories for the show in 2008. At the time, there was the Lehman Brothers crisis; the Korean economy was badly affected and I was also economically struggling.
“Over the past 10 years, there were a lot of issues: There was the cryptocurrency boom, where people around the world, especially young people in Korea, would go all-in and invest all their money into cryptocurrencies.”
Hwang also credited the show’s “rise of IT giants” such as Facebook, Google and the South Korean platform Naver, which are “restructuring our lives”.
He continued: “And then Donald Trump became the President of the United States and I think he kind of resembles one of the VIPs in the Squid Game.
“It’s almost like he’s running a game show, not a country, like giving people horror. After all these issues happened, I thought it was about time that this show goes out into the world.”
Squid Game can be watched now on Netflix.
