“SNL” America Gets Criticized For Discrimination Against Koreans In A Parody Of “Squid Game”

Squid Game may be all the rage globally, but it doesn’t mean that the show is spared from discriminatory reinterpretations. In an unfortunate turn of events, SNL America crafted a parody of the well-loved K-Drama and received backlash from Koreans who called it racist and discriminatory.

In the parody, one of the contestants decides to look up the prize money for conversion. He looks up the sum of ₩4.00 billion KRW (about $3.38 million USD). In the original drama, the sum was ₩45.6 billion KRW (about $38.6 million USD). However, not only did they choose a lesser sum of money for the parody, they also provided an inaccurate conversion. According to the parody, 4 billion KRW was converted to a mere $47.89 USD, far off from the correct $3.38 million USD.

Many Koreans found his highly offensive as it would give off a bad image of Korean currency while enforcing American superiority.

• “Fuck that’s just long-standing discrimination by treating us like a lesser country.”
• “22 I thought this was discrimination too…”
• “222 I don’t know why they included that.. it’s not even real conversion rates.”
• “33 What the fuck is this?”
• “4444 Are they crazy? Our currency and USD doesn’t have much difference anyway.”
• “444 No fuck what is this.”

• “Are they joking.”
• “Did our country suddenly have some large inflation I didn’t know about? They don’t want to get rid of their discrimination but they want to ride on our popularity, it’s so obvious. I’ll give you $48 so give me that money.”
• “[reply to previous comment] I acknowledge this is slander. Fans overseas were also upset.”
• “They’re so dumb so…”
• “Are they kidding?? I’m so upset. Such ignorant people.”
• “This got blown up cuz people overseas that watched this were saying it’s a pity and all that. That speaks for itself already.”

Many were upset at the interpretation of South Korea that could be caused by such a portrayal. On the other hand, Americans defended it as part of a comedy that simply showed the contestants were not aware of the little prize money due to conversion rates. What do you think?