The director of the successful Netflix series the squid gameHwang Dong-hyuk and actor Lee Jung-jae received the highest cultural medal in Korea on Tuesday, “for their contributions to the national content industry,” according to the presidential office.
President Yoon Suk Yeol awarded the Geumgwan Order of Cultural Merit medal, the highest of the government’s five cultural orders, to Hwang and Lee, in their office in Seoul, praising their place in the country’s film industry.
A presidential congratulations
In September, Hwang and Lee won Emmy Awards for Outstanding Director and Outstanding Actor in a Television Series, respectively.
Earlier, President Yoon had sent a congratulatory message to Hwang, saying the Emmy success was due to his “proud efforts and talent,” as demonstrated throughout his career through films such as silenced Y Miss grandma.
In a separate message given to Lee, Yoon said that her “outstanding performance” united her character and the hearts of viewers.
a huge success
Already in October last year Netflix had assured this the squid game It was the best premiere in the history of the platform by adding 111 million viewers in the first 28 days of broadcasting.
The South Korean series, which has become a worldwide mass phenomenon, has thus surpassed other successful formats such as Bridgertonwhich until then held the record with 82 million viewers, Queen’s Gambit, Stranger Things, Tiger King or Spanish The robbery of money.
According to Google searches during the first month of release, those related to the series dwarf those of any other title. And the Vans shoes its protagonists are wearing had increased their sales by 7800%.
Netflix’s head of content, Ted Sarandos, had already warned a couple of weeks before that the series had a “good chance of becoming its biggest event”.
The story begins with the protagonist Seong Gi-hun, a man in debt who contacts the organizer of a contest that could be the solution to all his problems. There you will find 455 people from different social classes, all with the same red numbers, willing to fight life or death for a prize of one million dollars.
The series’ success surprised Netflix, which only promoted its release in South Korea and didn’t even offer press passes in the United States. But the platform’s algorithm, which detects the most successful contents in one region and promotes them in others, has brought this fiction to the number one in more than 90 countries.
“It’s wild growth. We produce local content all over the world and we want it to have an impact in the countries where it is made, but once in a while one breaks out all over the world,” analyzed Sarandos, comparing the phenomenon with titles such as The robbery of money.
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Source: Clarin
