Squid Game is ending with season 3 – but star Lee Jung-jae wants it to continue

The pace is also curious, with some extended longueurs as we play catch-up with one another. Throughout, however, Lee Jung-jae, the star of Squid Game – in which he plays hero Seong Gi-hun (whom we first meet as a dishevelled, hopelessly addicted gambler in massive debt) – is smiley, pleasant, courteous and engaged.

I start by saying that I’m a great fan of the show – and that we have a lot of common interests: a shared passion for good coffee, interior design, clothes, Italian cooking (Lee has a keen interest in food and owns a chain of Italian restaurants in Seoul)… but maybe not so much his love of basketball. Translation; laughter.

Our interview takes place via Zoom, with Lee speaking to me from his Seoul office. He collects art and has a gallery, so it’s no surprise that in the background hangs a large painting, a modern piece by an American artist. He doesn’t offer the name, but when I ask he lists some of his favourite US artists, including Ed Ruscha, Donald Judd, Cy Twombly and Jenny Holzer. Ever polite, and possibly conscious of RT’s readership, he also reels off favourite English artists such as Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon and JMW Turner – he confirms that he has visited the fantastic collection of Turners at Tate Britain, as well as Marc Quinn’s monumental sculptures at Kew Gardens last year.

Today, though, the main topic is a different kind of visual art. We’re meeting to talk about the third and final season of Squid Game, the dystopian mock-reality horror thriller (watched in the world of the show only by sinister masked billionaires in a private screening room) where desperate people are pitted against each other in the hope of winning a life-changing pot of prize money. To win, contestants must play twisted versions of children’s games, and if they put a foot wrong – the terror of that first game of “Red Light Green Light”, which we would know here as “Grandmother’s Footsteps”) – they die.

The horrifying body count by the end of season one is a towering pile of 455 corpses – with Lee’s Seong Gi-hun, aka Player 456, the victor and sole survivor.

The first season of Squid Game, which made its debut in 2021, was created, written, directed and produced by Hwang Dong-hyuk who, not coincidentally, had studied film in the US. Its success-story statistics are worth quoting because they are so exceptional – it was Netflix’s biggest-ever show, number one in the Netflix top ten in 94 countries (including America, India and Brazil), with more than 142 million households spending over 1.65 billion hours watching the show in just the first 28 days of its release.

The following year, Lee became the first Asian man to receive a Primetime Emmy for lead actor in a drama series and was, in addition, the first person to win it for a non-English speaking role. And – completing a double-whammy of Emmy history for Squid Game – Hwang was the first Asian person to win the outstanding director award for a drama series.

Lee was already a well-known model and actor in Korea; a dashing figure playing debonair James Bond-type roles. Indeed, his legion of fans was so upset to see their hero looking bedraggled and pathetic in Squid Game, they started a campaign to restore his rightful image, as they saw it, saturating social media with glamorous photographs of the actor with a message that the sad-looking Player 456 was not at all how the real Lee looked.

Still, they might have to get used to their hero being seen a different way. Squid Game has propelled Lee into worldwide recognition, leading him to his first English-speaking role (as Jedi Master Sol in the Star Wars spin-off series The Acolyte) last year, appearances on American TV entertainment staples such as The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, becoming a global brand ambassador for Gucci and having the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio eager to take selfies with him.

Lee is an accomplished man. Apart from his acting, restaurants and art gallery, he co-founded the talent agency Artist Company (with fellow actor Jung Woo-sung, in 2016), which represents many of the major players in the Korean entertainment industry. He also has a real estate development company (Seorim C&D), set up in 2008, and owns a ten-floor building in Seoul, an apartment in the city and a two-million dollar home in Los Angeles.

As a young man, Lee had wanted to become an artist but, encouraged by his parents, studied design. Last year, he collaborated with the French design company Paulin, Paulin, Paulin in an exhibition of functional sculpture and furniture in Seoul, the first of its kind in Korea. He has expressed a desire to explore putting on public art projects, inspired by the works and installations of Richard Serra and Marc Quinn, bringing in foreign artists to Seoul.

Overall, it’s clear that with this newfound international fame, Lee sees himself as an ambassador for his own country. In conversation, he’s so appealingly enthusiastic about it as a desirable travel destination, he could be working for the Seoul tourist board: “I do feel a responsibility, as there are so many great things about Korea and I want people to know about that,” he explains. “So, I always tell people to come to Korea to visit, because it has a lot of good things including the fact that it is a very safe country to travel in. And people have very high standards when it comes to their morals – they’re very good people.

“They’re friendly and willing to help if you’re in a situation where you need it. So, if Korea is a totally new place for you and you might be a little scared or nervous about travelling there, don’t worry! Because in Korea there will be a lot of people who would be willing to help you. Also, we have really good food!”

The actor, as previously mentioned, has a deep interest in all cuisines. When I ask him what he does when he feels sad, he simply says, “I eat some great food.” I’m assuming that Italy and its cooking is one of his favourites, given that’s the focus of his Il Mare restaurants (named after his 2000 film) but, ever the diplomat, he says, “I really don’t have a favourite. I think all the cities and all the countries have their own charms. I really love London these days…”

Returning to Squid Game, we discuss how there’s a profound change in Lee’s character, Gi-hun, from season one to season two. Look away if you haven’t watched Squid Game yet – if you have, you will have seen how the hopeless ne’er-do-well has transformed into a man of steel, determined to use his prize money (the equivalent of around £24.5 million) to build a small army to track down the ruthless rich behind the game and bring an end to their cruel exploitation of the weak. Gi-hun has gone from enfeebled anti-hero to strong hero, risking his life to re-enter the game’s nightmarish pastel-coloured playground and bring down the bad guys. As a resistance leader, he inspires other brave contestants to follow his lead and… well, let’s just say that if that plan had gone swimmingly, there wouldn’t be the need for a third season.

So, what will happen next? Of course, it’s all top secret. All Lee will reveal is that, “when I read the script, there were so many twists and turns, it was full of surprises for me. I was, like, ‘Whaaat? Is this happening?’

“I was so curious about what choices these characters are going to make. It is full of things you would not expect. There are going to be lots of changes and transformations, and a lot of different characters from season two to season 3.”

Despite its quirky design and ultra-violence, Squid Game is an often thoughtful series that raises questions about humanity. I ask Lee if, as in Gi-hun’s story, he believes there is a possibility for people to change and become better versions of themselves. This provokes a particularly considered, serious response.

“One of the main reasons I make TV shows and films is to provide entertainment,” he says. “But it’s also important for us to strive to create a better society. That is the meaning I take away from this whole industry. I know a lot of people in different sectors try to do this too, but so do we through these different characters and stories. I think it is very important for us to do that. Of course I believe that people can change. For me, that’s the main message of Squid Game, that we must all work together to create a better society. I hope that when people watch the show, even if they don’t believe that somebody can entirely change for the better, they can at least change their thoughts and their behaviour so we can move towards a better society.”

I wonder if Lee is optimistic or pessimistic about life – does he believe that people are innately good, or selfish (we see a lot of the latter in Squid Game)? “It’s a difficult question,” he muses. “I actually think people are innately good, but there are circumstances that make them selfish. There could be people who are doing things that are morally or legally wrong. But even if they have done something wrong, if they show a lot of remorse and they don’t want to ever do it again, and they have apologised sincerely and genuinely, I think it’s important that we give them another chance. Remorse is important, and that people give them another chance is also very important.”

Lee can also be political, although we don’t discuss the fractious current political situation in South Korea – last December, President Yoon Suk Yeol tried to enforce martial law leading to violent street protests and his removal from office, with his opposition leaders recently winning the snap election called on 3 June. In 2022, Lee made his directorial debut with Hunt, a South Korean spy action thriller set in the 1980s when the country was under a military dictatorship and there were massive pro-democracy protests. In the film, which Lee also wrote, he plays an agent trying to find a North Korean mole.

He wanted to look at the political stories between the North and South, and has since said that he only took on the project because no one else wanted to tackle such a sensitive topic. Hunt had its world premiere at Cannes, where Lee talked about the parallels between the propaganda fed to the South Koreans by the government in that period and the fake news on social media now. He stressed how important it was for people to be vigilant about seeking accurate reporting – an even bigger problem, one would think, with the rise of “deepfake” AI videos.

I would like to ask Lee how he feels about society going backwards, with Mark Zuckerberg and others making the decision to stop fact-checking on their social media platforms. But, to be honest, it just seems too difficult to broach such a subject when even a simple question takes such a long time to answer. But I sense that if we spoke the same language, his answers would be nuanced and complex.

Squid Game isn’t the only piece of Korean media to make it big in the West, of course. We seem to be having an extended Korean moment, with Bong Joon-ho’s 2019 satire Parasite winning Oscars for Best Picture, Director, Original Screenplay and International Feature Film; Korean restaurants gaining Michelin stars in London and New York; the V&A’s 2023 exhibition devoted to K-culture, and Korean fashion designers regularly featured in Vogue and ELLE. As well as exports from Korea of kimchi – the spicy relish made with fermented vegetables – more than doubling over the past decade.

We had something similar with all things Scandi a while back, with everyone sporting the jumpers worn by Sofie Grabol in The Killing and lighting candles during the day to embrace our inner hygge. Does Lee recognise something similar is going on with Korean culture – and, if so, is he happy, or a bit irritated to see it reduced to what may be a passing trend?

“I personally hope that this is just the beginning of people becoming aware of Korean culture and that it’s not just a fad that goes away,” he says. “When I go overseas, a lot of people are very curious about Korea and our culture and food. They ask me a lot of questions. I think we can go further and work harder to introduce more of our beautiful culture so that it becomes even more appealing to people. Again, I recommend that visiting Korea would be a good thing.”

Is there a Korean word or catchphrase that he thinks could take off, in the way that hygge did – something recognisable to us Brits? “Yes – daebak”, he replies. “The literal translation is ‘jackpot’, but it means ‘really cool’. So whenever you see something that’s cool, you say daebak.”

Conversely, he finds it hard to pinpoint what characterises Korean humour but thinks it tends to be less about making fun of a person and more about the situation they find themselves in when something goes wrong. So, can he tell us a typical Korean joke? “It’s very hard for me to think of one because I’m getting old [Lee is 52] so when I hear one, I laugh and then I instantly forget it,” he admits, smiling.

Lee is currently in production on a romcom for Korean television as well as working on his own scripts. With his dozens of businesses keeping him busy, too, I wonder if he has any time or appetite left for more Squid Game. I jokingly suggest the idea of a Christmas spin-off – but it’s clear that the actor takes the suggestion seriously. “We definitely need to get Hwang Dong-hyuk on board, so can someone please lure him into creating that spin-off?” he says. “Or maybe just another season of Squid Game?”

Now, that really would be daebak.

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Squid Game seasons 1-2 are available to stream on Netflix. Season 3 arrives on Friday 27th June. Sign up for Netflix from £5.99 a month. Netflix is also available on Sky Glass and Virgin Media Stream.

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