Netflix’s Squid Game may have lost its status as the most-watched TV series on the platform after an impressive 25-day streak at the top, but viewership records keep on tumbling to the Korean cultural phenomenon.
An estimated 124 million subscribers have watched the violent adventure since it premiered, placing it miles ahead of Bridgerton on the all-time Top 10. North Korea doesn’t have many kind things to say about Squid Game, but reports are now claiming that the show has become immensely popular in China, despite being banned by the country’s censorship board.
As per the South China Morning Post, the fact Netflix isn’t even available in China has done nothing to dampen Squid Game‘s popularity among local audiences, with South Korean ambassador Jang Ha-sung hinting that he’s aware of at least 60 different websites where the Chinese population can illegally watch it.
Social media app Weibo has racked up millions of views for any and all content bearing Squid Game hashtags, even though the government has been increasingly cracking down on content deemed as overly violent or just generally unpalatable to China at large, which has seen some major Hollywood franchises denied a theatrical release. As it turns out, even a regime that heavily regulates what people can and can’t see isn’t immune from the scourge of piracy and file-sharing.
