Squid Game : Seong Gi-hun is down on his luck, having accumulated enormous debts with loan sharks while becoming estranged from his daughter and ex-wife. In a subway, a well-dressed man asks him to play a game of ddakji for money, and offers an opportunity to play more games with much higher stakes. Gi-hun accepts, is sedated, and awakens in a dormitory with 455 others, identified only by numbers on their green tracksuits. A group of masked guards in pink jumpsuits arrive and explain that the players are all in dire financial straits, but will be given billions of won in prize money if they can win six games over six days. The games are overseen by the Front Man, who is masked and dressed in black. Gi-hun befriends Player 001, an elderly man suffering from a brain tumor. He also recognizes two other players: Cho Sang-woo, a childhood classmate who became an investment broker, and Player 067, a pickpocket who stole Gi-hun’s money after he won a horse race wager. The first game is Red Light, Green Light, where anyone caught moving is shot dead on the spot, revealing the sadistic nature of the games. Half the crowd panics and attempts to flee upon realizing this, turning the game into a massacre. With help from Sang-woo and Player 199, Gi-hun finishes the game alive.
With over half of the players killed in the first game, many survivors demand to be released. Using the game’s third clause, they narrowly vote to cancel the game and send everyone home, but without any prize money. Back in Seoul, Gi-hun goes to the police, but no one believes him except Detective Hwang Jun-ho, whose brother received the same invitation card and has recently disappeared. The players are invited to re-enter the game, and many return out of desperation. This includes Gi-hun, whose mother needs surgery; Sang-woo, who is about to be arrested for financial fraud; Player 001, who does not wish to die in the outside world; Player 067, who wishes to rescue her parents from North Korea and get her little brother out of an orphanage; Player 199, a Pakistani migrant worker who attacked and gravely injured his boss for withholding his wages; and Player 101, named Jang Deok-su, a gangster on the run from gambling debts and his ex-bosses. Jun-ho secretly follows Gi-hun when he is picked up by the guards.
