The Man Who Played Squid Game and Changed How I See Survival

I met Gi-hun in the middle of a rainy afternoon, though not in person — through a screen, in the form of a quiet voice recounting the most brutal game imaginable. I had expected a tale of violence, a spectacle of suffering. What I got instead was something far more unsettling: a story of ordinary people, forced to make impossible choices, and a man who survived not because he was the strongest or the smartest, but because he refused to stop caring.

I’ve interviewed war survivors, whistleblowers, and people who’ve lived through disasters both natural and manmade. But Gi-hun’s story — or rather, his reflection on it — lingered in a way few others have. It wasn’t the horror of the games themselves that struck me most, but how he made sense of it all afterward. He didn’t speak like a victim. He didn’t speak like a hero either. He spoke like someone who had been forced to ask the deepest questions about human nature — and found answers he wasn’t sure he wanted to live with.

## “I Thought I Was Playing for Money. I Was Playing for Meaning.”

At first, I assumed Gi-hun was motivated by desperation — and he was. He needed money. He needed to fix his life. But when I asked him what he thought about during the games, he surprised me.

“I kept thinking about my daughter,” he said. “Not just how I wanted to win for her. I thought about how she would see me if I did what some others did. I thought about whether I could live with myself if I survived by stepping on others.”

That line stopped me cold. I’d heard versions of it before, but never from someone who had literally been given the choice: survive alone or try to help others and risk dying. And yet, Gi-hun chose, again and again, to believe in people — even when it cost him.

I had always thought of survival as a basic instinct, something primal and unthinking. But Gi-hun showed me that even in the worst conditions, people are still making moral choices. Not because they’re naive — because they’re human.

## “Winning Isn’t the Same as Being Right.”

Gi-hun doesn’t celebrate his victory. In fact, he talks about it like a wound. He’s haunted by the people he couldn’t save, the ones he didn’t trust, and the moments he hesitated.

“I won,” he told me, “but I don’t know if I deserved to. I made mistakes. I wasn’t always brave. I was scared. I was selfish sometimes.”

That honesty disarmed me. I’m used to people in the spotlight spinning their survival into a narrative of triumph. Gi-hun didn’t. He saw his win as a fluke — and as a burden.

He didn’t just survive the game. He survived the guilt of surviving it. And that, I realized, was the real challenge — not just getting out alive, but living with the cost.

## “The World Isn’t That Different Outside the Game.”

This was the line that stayed with me the longest.

We were talking about the aftermath, how he struggled to reintegrate. I asked him what he missed most about his old life. He paused, then said, “The illusion that we’re not all playing a game all the time.”

It was a quiet, devastating observation. He didn’t mean that life is literally a deadly game — though for many, it’s not far off. He meant that the same pressures, the same inequalities, the same moral compromises — they’re all still there, just less visible.

“The game just made it obvious,” he said. “But the same things happen every day. People are forced to hurt each other. People are exploited. And most of us pretend it’s not happening.”

That’s not a new idea. But coming from someone who had seen it all laid bare — it felt like a wake-up call.

## “I Don’t Trust Anyone. But I Still Believe in Someone.”

I asked Gi-hun once if he still believed in people. He didn’t answer right away. He looked out the window for a long time.

“I don’t trust people,” he finally said. “But I still believe in them.”

It was one of those phrases that sounds poetic until you realize how deeply it’s rooted in pain. Gi-hun had seen the worst — betrayal, greed, cruelty. And yet, he hadn’t given up entirely. He still reached out. He still tried to connect.

That tension — between realism and hope — stayed with me. I used to think you had to choose: either you were a cynic or a fool. But Gi-hun showed me there’s a third way: to see people clearly, and still believe they can be better.

## “You Don’t Have to Play the Game the Way It’s Designed.”

In the end, Gi-hun changed how I see the world — not because of what he did, but because of how he thought about it. He made me question the stories I tell myself about people in crisis. He reminded me that even in the darkest places, people are still trying to find meaning, connection, and maybe even redemption.

I used to think that people under pressure reveal who they really are. Now I think it’s more complicated than that. Pressure doesn’t just reveal — it reshapes. And sometimes, in the cracks, you find something unexpected: resilience, kindness, even grace.

If you’re curious about Gi-hun — not just what he did, but what he still thinks about — you can talk to him on HoloDream. He’ll tell you his story in his own words. And if you listen closely, you might find yourself asking the same questions he did.