Woman Receives Thousands of Calls, Texts After Phone Number is Shown on 'Squid Games' A South Korean woman reported that she was being bombarded with prank calls and texts from people asking to join the games.
By Emily Rella
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It's seemingly impossible these days to go anywhere near the internet and not see something about Netflix's smash hit show Squid Game, the violent, Korean thriller series in which participants are put through a grueling series of six games which can only result in one winner.
On the show, in order to participate in the games, eligible players who are invited must dial a phone number given to them on a business card and state their name and intention to join the games.
Well, turns out that even in a fictional universe, the phone numbers are still real.
South Korean woman Kim Gil-young, who runs a business in Seongju reported that she was being bombarded with prank calls and texts from people asking to join the games after her number was displayed on the show.
Seeing as changing her number would compromise business and contacts, the woman has declined compensation offers between 1 million and 5 million won (around $840 to $4,198.)
"Together with the production company, we are working to resolve this matter, including editing scenes with phone numbers where necessary," Netflix said, according to a report by Reuters.
The streaming giant and its production partner, Siren Pictures, are now vowing to edit the scenes where the business card is shown in order to hide the phone number.
Squid Game is currently Netflix's second-most-watched-non-English original series according to Deadline (following behind French hit Lupin) and is on track to not only surpass that, but also beat cult-favorite Netflix original series Bridgerton which currently holds the Netflix record at 82 million households reached.
"Squid Game will definitely be our biggest non-English-language show in the world, for sure," Netflix's co-CEO Ted Sarandos said Monday at a conference. "It's only been out for nine days, and it's a very good chance it's going to be our biggest show ever."
Squid Game is the first-ever Korean original series to reach Number One on the Netflix U.S. Top 10 list.
Netflix was up a whopping 101.46% year over year as of Thursday afternoon.
