When we first meet Squid Game protagonist Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) in Season 1, he doesn’t have enough money to buy his daughter fried chicken for her birthday. This lack of means, made more extreme by his crippling debt, informs Gi-hun’s decision to take part in the Squid Game—even after he discovers its deadly stakes. When Gi-hun emerges as the gauntlet’s only survivor, he takes home 45.6 billion won.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]Watching Korean deadly competition drama Squid Game as an American can turn into an exercise in pausing high-stakes action in order to Google the won to USD exchange rate. (At the time of this writing, it’s $1 is to roughly 1,447 won.) The series communicates that 45.6 billion won is a life-changing amount of money for the Korean contestants. But what exactly does that mean in tangible terms?
Ahead of Squid Game Season 2, out on Dec. 26, let’s break down what the prize is really worth, in a 2024 context.
In December 2024, at the time of writing this article, the 45.6 billion won prize pot equated to roughly $31.5 million. Notably, the Korean won is at a 15-year low in relation to the U.S. dollar.
The prize pot is the same for the game in Season 2 as it was for the game in Season 1, even though it has been three years in both our world and the world of the show, and the Korean cost of living has increased. In 2021, the 45.6 billion won prize money would have been closer to $38.5 million when converted to USD. Apparently, the people who run the game care neither about the vagaries of global currencies, nor inflation.
How much would 45.6 billion won mean to a “normal” person in Korea? Well, the average monthly salary in Korea is 3.9 million won, or around $2,696. This amounts to 46.8 million won per year (around $32,347) before income tax. With his winnings, Gi-hun could pay the annual average salaries for roughly 974 Korean workers.
Half of the country’s population lives in the Seoul metropolitan area, which was ranked as the ninth most expensive city for expats in a 2024 survey. When it comes to the Seoul rental market, it costs around $475 per month for a studio apartment outside of the city center or around $2,500 per month for a three-bedroom apartment in the city center.
From a U.S. perspective, that monthly rent might seem very cheap, but it’s important to factor in the unique rental payment structure, known as jeonse, commonly used in Korea. The system involves the tenant putting down a large sum of “key money” when leasing an apartment that will be returned at the end of the usually two-year lease period. The “key money” is usually anywhere between 50% to 70% of the property’s value, making it difficult or impossible for many Koreans to break into the rental market. In November 2023, the mean jeonse cost was 423 million won, or roughly $292,000. After winning the game, Gi-hun would have no trouble renting; he could afford to pay the mean jeonse cost for roughly 108 apartments.
Of course, with the game’s 45.6 billion won prize, Gi-hun could afford to buy something in Seoul’s property market—which is almost completely inaccessible to the average Korean. A state-issued study released in 2023 determined that a Seoul resident would have to not spend a single dime of their income for 15.2 years to buy a home in the city. The average apartment in Seoul’s richest neighborhood, Gangnam (made famous in Psy’s 2012 satirical banger “Gangnam Style”), sells for 2.25 billion won, roughly $1.56 million.
As for fried chicken? Gi-hun could now afford to buy his daughter more than 1.8 million of the 25,000-won tongdak signatures at this August Chicken branch near Seoul’s Yaksu station. Unfortunately, she moved to Los Angeles with her mother and stepfather in Season 1.
In Episode 1 of Season 2, “The Search,” Gi-hun casually offers his network of gangsters a 500 million won bonus for finding Gong Yoo’s The Recruiter somewhere in the Seoul subway system. The men are highly motivated by that amount of money, which equates to about $346,000.
Here are a few final metrics, which feel relevant in the context of Squid Game’s depiction of the absurdity of wealth accumulation under capitalism: Jeff Bezos makes $1.9 million per hour, which equates to about 2.75 billion won, or roughly $45.8 million in a 24-hour period—so, he makes more in one of his days than Gi-hun made winning the whole game.
In 2024, Elon Musk passed Bezos to become the wealthiest person on the planet; his net worth recently reached over $400 billion, spurred by Donald Trump’s re-election. Gi-hun would have to win the game over 12,700 times to accumulate that much money.
