Squid Game Season 1: What Is a Human Life Worth?

When I began thinking about which show should become the very first TV Series feature on Screen Devotions, one title came to mind almost immediately: Squid Game. If I was going to open this new category with one series, this felt like the right place to begin. Few Korean dramas have reached such a massive global audience or helped push K-drama further into the international spotlight in quite the same way.

Before getting into the story itself, I want to share a little of the background behind how Squid Game was made. Director Hwang Dong-hyuk first began developing the idea in 2008 and completed it as a film screenplay in 2009. At the time, however, the concept was considered too unfamiliar, too violent, and difficult to finance. The project remained unmade for years before eventually finding its way to Netflix and being expanded into a series. The result, of course, became far bigger than almost anyone could have imagined. A story deeply rooted in Korean culture reached viewers around the world and became a global cultural phenomenon.

In some ways, that production history feels strangely fitting. A story that once seemed too unusual to succeed eventually resonated across cultures because its deepest themes were universal: money, competition, inequality, desperation, power, and survival.

Like Parasite, Squid Game is deeply Korean in its setting, games, language, and social context, yet its social commentary reaches far beyond Korea. The Squid Game Season 1 biblical themes become especially powerful because childhood games that once represented innocence are transformed into brutal contests where money and survival are placed above almost everything else. As viewers, we are not simply watching to see who survives. We are being confronted with much larger questions: How far can money push a person? How much can survival be used to justify our actions? And what is a human life really worth?

Through these seven themes, I want to take a closer look at Squid Game Season 1 and the questions it raises about money, dignity, trust, sin, sacrifice, and what it means to remain human.

1. Gi-hun and the Price of a Human Life

The people who enter the games in Squid Game have something in common. Each of them is carrying serious problems from the outside world, and many are drowning in overwhelming debt and financial desperation. For them, the enormous prize money does not look like ordinary wealth. It feels like one final chance to start life over. But that money can only grow as other participants die. Every time another player is eliminated, the prize increases, and human death is literally converted into money.

Watching the series makes me reflect on how easily money can begin to shape the human heart. I often think of money as something that carries a kind of spiritual power. I do not mean that money is literally a spiritual being. What I mean is that its influence over our desires, fears, relationships, and decisions can become incredibly strong.

There is a Korean proverb that says, “A single word can repay a debt of a thousand nyang,” meaning that words carry great power. Scripture also speaks repeatedly about the power of the tongue and how words can build people up or tear them down. Money, however, can exert an enormous influence of its own. People fight over it. Families divide over it. Friends betray one another because of it. Sometimes people even abandon their conscience for it.

Does being a Christian make us automatically free from the power of money? I do not believe it does. We still have to earn money, save it, spend it, give it, and make decisions about it throughout our lives. Because of that, we constantly need to examine whether money remains a tool in our hands or whether it has slowly begun to occupy a place in our hearts that belongs to God. Jesus clearly taught that we cannot serve both God and money as masters.

The story of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts also comes to mind. Their problem was not simply that they failed to give away every part of their property. They were free to keep some of what they owned. The problem was that they secretly held back part of the money while pretending that they had given everything. At the center of that story were greed, dishonesty, and a heart that wanted to appear more faithful than it really was.

When I look at the participants in Squid Game, I am reminded that any of us can face similar temptations. I am a sinner too, and I cannot confidently say that money could never shake me. Gi-hun does not begin the story as an evil man who wants to kill others for a fortune. He is slowly pushed into desperation through gambling, debt, irresponsibility, and repeated bad decisions until he finally enters the game.

That is part of what makes Squid Game so unsettling. It does not simply show us a group of obviously evil people. It shows ordinary people being pushed into extreme circumstances and gradually revealing what fear, desire, and desperation can bring out of them.

So the question I am left with is this: Is money a tool I use for my life, or have I slowly begun to serve it instead?

2. When People Become Numbers

In Squid Game, the participants are usually known not by their names but by numbers. Gi-hun is Player 456. Oh Il-nam is 001. Kang Sae-byeok is 067. Ji-yeong is 240. I find this both deeply sad and incredibly meaningful.

Outside the game, these people are someone’s father, mother, son, daughter, sibling, or friend. Each of them has a history, people they love, regrets, wounds, and dreams. But once they enter the game, their names disappear and only their numbers remain.

That makes the moments when they exchange their real names even more powerful. The marble game especially brings this out. Il-nam, who has mostly been known as 001, tells Gi-hun his name. Ji-yeong, Player 240, and Sae-byeok, Player 067, also exchange their real names shortly before Ji-yeong accepts her death. For a brief moment, people who have been reduced to numbers become fully visible as people again.

Every one of us has a name, and just as our names are different, our lives are different too. Scripture tells us that human beings are created in the image of God. If that is true, then a person’s value cannot be determined by economic status, productivity, social rank, the amount of debt they carry, or a number assigned to them by a system.

Yet the structure of Squid Game does exactly that. When one participant dies, more money is added to the giant piggy bank hanging above the room. The more lives disappear, the larger the prize becomes. A person is no longer treated as a life with history, relationships, and dignity, but as a number translated into cash.

Perhaps that is exactly why the numbers matter so much. In a system that strips people of dignity, numbers are easier to manage than names. Once we know someone’s name, we begin thinking about who that person is. But when we know only a number, it becomes easier to distance ourselves from that person’s suffering.

That is why remembering someone’s name matters. To call someone by name is to begin seeing that person not as a statistic, a burden, or a number, but as someone whose life has value.

3. Ali: Kindness in a World Built on Exploitation

Ali is one of the most memorable characters in Squid Game. Like the others, he enters the game because he desperately needs money, but the way he treats people is very different. He remains respectful toward people he barely knows, helps Gi-hun in a dangerous moment, and trusts Sang-woo like an older brother. Even after experiencing unfair treatment as a foreign worker in Korea and not receiving the wages he earned, he does not easily give up his trust in people.

Ali’s story raises a painful question: Do good people always lose in a broken world? The world of Squid Game makes trust look like a weakness. If you help someone, that person may later betray you. If you give something up for someone else, your own chance of survival becomes smaller. In an environment like that, it becomes easy to think, “Being kind only gets you hurt.”

We can feel something similar in real life. An honest employee may be taken advantage of. Someone may betray us after we trusted them. We may help another person sincerely, only to have that kindness treated as something they are entitled to. After enough experiences like that, we can begin telling ourselves, “Maybe I should stop trusting people,” or “Maybe I need to become more selfish too.”

But I do not want to describe Ali’s kindness as simple foolishness. His tragedy does not come from the fact that he is good. It comes from the fact that someone chooses to exploit his goodness. The problem is not kindness itself. The problem is using another person’s trust as a tool for our own benefit.

In Scripture, goodness and wisdom are not opposites. Jesus told His disciples to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. We should be able to love and trust people, but we also need discernment. We do not need to live suspicious of everyone, but neither should goodness require us to abandon judgment.

Ali leaves us with another question: Am I someone who protects the trust others place in me, or am I willing to use that trust when it benefits me? Just because the world often rewards exploitation does not mean Christians have to live the same way. In fact, a world like that may need even more people who refuse to turn another person’s kindness into a weakness.

4. Sang-woo and the Moral Cost of Survival

Sang-woo is one of the most complicated characters in Squid Game. He graduated from Seoul National University and was known in his neighborhood as a successful man, yet in reality he was buried under massive debt and serious legal problems. Eventually, he enters the game. At first, he appears intelligent, calm, and highly capable, but as the games continue, his decisions become increasingly ruthless.

Watching Sang-woo makes me think about the phrase, “I had no choice. I had to survive.” In Squid Game, survival is literally at stake. Sometimes one person can only survive if someone else dies. Because of that, we can understand why Sang-woo begins making certain choices. But understanding why someone does something is not the same as saying that it is right.

We use the phrase “I had no choice” in real life too. We may say we had to lie to survive at work, to make money, to protect our family, or to stay ahead in competition. We may convince ourselves that stepping on someone else was unavoidable or that using another person was simply the only option available.

But sin often seems to begin this way. Very few people wake up thinking, “Today I want to do something evil.” Instead, we lower our standards little by little: “Just this once.” “There was no other way.” “I have to survive too.”

Was Sang-woo cruel from the beginning? I do not want to simplify him that way. As the game continues, the standard by which he makes decisions gradually changes. At first, he calculates in order to survive. Later, he deceives people in order to survive. Eventually, he actively sacrifices the lives of others to protect his own.

His story raises an important question: How much can survival justify sin? Scripture does not tell us that lies become truth or evil becomes good simply because the situation is difficult. If anything, difficult circumstances often reveal more clearly what we truly believe and what we are willing to compromise.

When I watch Sang-woo, I find myself asking how quickly I might lower the standards I claim to believe in once life becomes difficult. Anyone can appear good when everything is going well. But when I begin to lose, when my position is threatened, and when I may have to give up something important, that may be the moment when what I truly believe becomes visible.

5. The Marbles Game: Love, Betrayal, and Sacrifice

One of the most memorable moments in Squid Game Season 1 is the marble game. As I mentioned earlier, what makes this game especially cruel is not simply that someone has to die. The players are told to choose a partner, so naturally they select the person they trust most or feel closest to. They assume they are forming teams to survive together. Then the rules reveal that they must compete against that very person, and only one of them can live.

Inside this one game, we see several completely different kinds of relationships. Gi-hun and Il-nam, Sang-woo and Ali, and Sae-byeok and Ji-yeong all face the same situation, yet their relationships end in very different ways.

Sang-woo deceives Ali, who trusts him completely. Ali continues believing in him until the end, holding on to the small pouch he has been given, only to discover that his marbles have been replaced with stones. It is one of the most painful examples of how the goodness and trust we saw earlier in Ali can be exploited.

Ji-yeong, on the other hand, gives up her chance for Sae-byeok. They are not lifelong friends, and they are not family. Yet in a short amount of time, they open up to one another about their lives, and Ji-yeong decides that Sae-byeok has more reason to keep living than she does. In her final moments, they exchange their real names. Two people who had been known mostly by numbers choose to remember one another as people.

The relationship between Il-nam and Gi-hun is also complicated. Gi-hun takes advantage of Il-nam’s apparent confusion and memory loss in order to win his marbles. But near the end, Il-nam reveals that he knew Gi-hun was deceiving him. Once we learn Il-nam’s true identity later in the season, the entire scene becomes even more complicated. Yet in that moment alone, we can still see how easily survival can push someone to compromise conscience and relationship.

For me, the marble game is one of the clearest portraits of the human heart in the entire series. Love, betrayal, sacrifice, and deception all exist in the same place. People face the same threat of death, yet make completely different choices. One person deceives a friend in order to live. Another gives up her own chance so that someone else can survive.

Jesus said that there is no greater love than laying down one’s life for a friend. That does not mean Ji-yeong or any character in Squid Game should be treated as a direct symbol of Christ’s sacrifice. But her choice can still make us reflect on sacrificial love and what it means to give something up for another person. Sang-woo’s choice, by contrast, shows what can happen when self-preservation becomes more important than love and trust.

So the marble game seems to ask us: When I am truly desperate, will I use another person, or will I still treat that person as fully human?

Comparative Analysis: Three Relationships in the Marbles Game

Pair	Response to Survival	What It Reveals
Sang-woo & Ali	Sang-woo exploits Ali’s complete trust in order to survive.	Self-preservation can turn another person’s goodness into something to exploit.
Sae-byeok & Ji-yeong	Ji-yeong gives up her opportunity so that Sae-byeok can continue living.	Even inside a system built on self-preservation, sacrificial love remains possible.
Gi-hun & Il-nam	Gi-hun compromises his conscience by taking advantage of Il-nam’s apparent weakness.	Desperation can blur the moral boundaries even of someone who still wants to see himself as compassionate.

6. The VIPs: Suffering Turned Into Entertainment

As the games move toward the end, we meet the VIPs who have come simply to enjoy the spectacle. For the participants, the games are a matter of life and death. Some entered because of debt. Others need money for their families. Some feel they have nowhere else to go. But to the VIPs, all of this is nothing more than entertainment.

They watch people die, place bets on who will win, and consume human suffering as if it were a sporting event. This is one of the most direct expressions of Squid Game’s social commentary. On one side, someone’s entire life is collapsing. On the other, that collapse becomes someone else’s amusement.

But is this only a problem with the fictional VIPs?

In real life, we can also consume other people’s suffering far too easily. Someone’s failure or public downfall can become entertaining internet content. A celebrity scandal becomes material for clicks. Videos of accidents and disasters are replayed again and again. What may be the most painful moment of someone’s life can become a few minutes of content for the rest of us.

That does not mean watching news, documentaries, or reports about difficult events is automatically wrong. The deeper issue is what kind of heart we bring to another person’s suffering. Am I seeing that person as someone with dignity, or only as content that shocks, excites, or entertains me?

Jesus did not treat suffering people as spectacles. He met the sick, the poor, and the socially rejected as people. He stopped for those whom others had learned to ignore.

The VIPs in Squid Game do not even care about the names of the players. To them, the participants are little more than pieces on a game board. It does not matter who dies as long as the entertainment continues.

Watching them makes me wonder whether modern society has become too accustomed to the suffering of others. Have we become so used to scrolling past tragedy, scandal, and pain that we forget the person on the screen is someone’s family member, someone’s friend, and a person who still carries God-given dignity?

7. Gi-hun’s Final Choice: Holding On to Humanity

As the game reaches its end, Gi-hun and Sang-woo are the last two remaining. They grew up in the same neighborhood and have known each other since childhood, but now they must face one another in the final game with both survival and the enormous prize at stake.

Countless people have died by this point. From the beginning, the structure of the game has repeatedly taught the players the same lesson: if you want to survive, move before someone else, deceive if necessary, and sacrifice others when required. Inside a system like this, simply trying to remain human can begin to look like a weakness.

Yet in the final moments, Gi-hun tries to make a different choice. Instead of killing Sang-woo and becoming the sole winner, he proposes ending the game so that both of them can return home. Even when victory is within reach, he still refuses to completely abandon the other person.

This raises one of the most important questions in Squid Game Season 1: Can we remain human inside an inhuman system?

If the world behaves selfishly, does that mean I must become selfish too? If people lie, do I have to lie? If people use one another, does that make it acceptable for me to use people too?

In the world of Squid Game, survival and money are placed above almost every other value. Yet Gi-hun’s final choice suggests that, at least in that moment, something may matter more than simply surviving: what kind of person we are when we survive.

This is also an important question for faith. Success, earning money, and competing well in the world can all matter. But if we lose sight of who we are becoming in the process, what have we actually gained?

Jesus asked what good it is for someone to gain the whole world and yet lose their soul. When I look at the enormous prize in Squid Game, that question feels almost visible. The contestants enter the game hoping to gain money, but along the way many lose conscience, relationships, and eventually even life itself.

Gi-hun is not a perfect person either. He does not begin the story as a morally strong hero, and he carries many weaknesses and failures. But perhaps that is exactly why his final choice matters. Remaining human may not mean becoming perfect. It may mean refusing, even at our most desperate, to reduce another person to nothing more than a tool for our own survival.

When I look at Squid Game Season 1 as a whole, I see a story about money and, at the same time, a story about humanity. It asks how far money can push us, what we are willing to sacrifice when survival is at stake, and what happens when the value of a person is reduced to a number and a cash prize.

So I want to leave us with two questions: Do we truly believe that people are more valuable than money? And can we say that who we become while surviving matters more than survival itself?

Watching Squid Game, I sometimes think the most frightening thing may not be the games themselves. The truly frightening moment may be the moment when money and survival cause us to stop seeing another person as a person.

That is why we need to keep remembering this: The person in front of us is not a player number. That person has a name, a life, people they love, and dignity given by God.

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Explore More Screen Devotions:

• 🎬 Movies: Explore Other Faith-Based Film Reflections
• 🌍 Documentaries: Biblical Perspectives on Real-World Issues
• 🎨 Animation: Spiritual Insights in Animated Films

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Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.