If you’ve been on Netflix lately, chances are, you’ve seen the title card for a new series that’s captivating viewers everywhere. Squid Games is a survival game show series that takes nine hopefuls through a mysterious fight for survival with a massive ₩45.6 billion prize at the end.
With so much on the line, it’s to be expected that the survival challenges would be complex and, at times, seemingly impossible, but there’s more to the game than trying to win. The survival aspect becomes less of an idea and more of a dire need. There aren’t safe zones in place; there aren’t teams equipped to handle emergencies waiting in the wings. This is life or death—no TV magic included.
From a gambling addict to a man with a brain tumor, the people who signed up for the game know that the stakes are high. The game players are invited in by a calling card, and it turns out that the number used in the Netflix series is an actual number linked to a business owner in the Gyeonggi Province.
While it might be a fun idea (in theory) that your number would be used in a pop culture tv hit, the reality of it is that it’s actually quite daunting, and the man who owns the number in his day-to-day life is dealing with thousands of prank-calls because of it.
EpicStream reports that the man started receiving 4,000 calls a day and thought it was a crazy increase in spam calls at first as he wasn’t aware of the series. He was made aware of the series when one of the callers told him where they got the number from.
The production team for Squid Game reached out to the man and told him that the number already went out, and while it wasn’t intentional, it wasn’t something that could be changed now. Their response after isn’t sitting well with the owner of the number or anyone who sees the issue here at all.
“We can’t do anything since [the phone number] already went out and it’s not like we did it intentionally. Honestly, we think the only option is for you to change your number.”
Someone did offer a solution, however. Presidential hopeful Huh Kyung-young, the National Revolutionary Party’s honorary chief who is now a Presidential hopeful, said that he would purchase the number from the man for 100 million won.
It’s unknown if the offer will be accepted, as the man’s initial reservations to changing it still stand, but the gesture was a nice one coming from someone outside the realm of the series altogether.
You can watch Squid Game on Netflix now.
