The creator of Squid Game talks about why the inclusion of a transgender character was important to him

when Squid game 2 It arrives next weekFans will come together Lots of new faces– Including Hyun Joo, also known as Player 120, the show’s first trans character. Joining the competition in hopes of earning enough money to complete gender confirmation surgery, she proves to be a quick-thinking leader and, thanks to her previous career as a soldier, an absolute badass.

On the last press day for Squid game 2director and creator Hwang Dong-hyuk spoke to a group of journalists, including io9, about why he wanted to include a trans character this time.

“People who come to join the games Squid game “They are often marginalized or neglected from society, not just financially, but people who may belong to marginalized groups,” Hwang explained through a translator. “In the first season, the representative character for that was Ali, who was a foreigner working in Korea, which is one of the most underrepresented minority groups in Korea. Currently, unfortunately, in Korean society, the sexual minority is a group that is not widely accepted within society. I was I want to create a character that represents that.

Huang said acceptance of transgender people has gotten better recently, but it’s still not where it needs to be. “In Korea, when you’re from a gender minority, it’s not widely accepted yet, unfortunately, and you’re still seen as very much out of the ordinary,” he said. “So by creating a character like Hyun-ju, through her choices and actions and the way she deals in the game, I hope it will raise awareness of these issues that we face today.”

In a different interview Hwang conducted with TV guideaddressed the fact that although Hyun-Ju is a transgender woman, she is played by a cis male actor, Park Sung-hoon.

While this practice has been very common in the West – one recent example: Eddie Redmayne was nominated for an Oscar for playing a transgender woman in 2015 Danish girl– It has now become something that directors and creators are turning away from, preferring instead to have performers play trans characters. However, the culture in South Korea has not yet arrived, Hwang told TV Guide.

“I expected such discussions to arise from the first moment I started creating the character of Hyun-ju. “At first we were doing our research, and I was thinking about doing an actual casting for a transgender actor,” Hwang said. That proved to be more difficult than he realised. “When we looked in Korea, there were almost no openly transgender actors, let alone openly gay, because unfortunately in Korean society right now, the LGBTQ community is still marginalized and more neglected, which is heartbreaking… It was almost impossible Search About someone we can authentically choose.

Casting Park Sung Hoon was the next best choice, according to Hwang: “I had complete confidence in him that he would be the right person in terms of talent to portray this character.”

Meet Player 120 and more new characters when Squid game 2 It arrives on Netflix on December 26.

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