"The Squid Game" is the year's most action-packed series, but it's nothing new. Why is it a hit in 90 countries?

What is this series about?

Charming and kind, but terribly unlucky and defenseless Song Gi Hoon (Lee Jong-Jae) lives with his elderly mother and doesn't work anywhere, and loses the money his mother gives for a present for her granddaughter at the races. Sung Ki Hoon owes everyone around him-and has already reached the stage of desperation where the man is ready to ask his ex-wife and her new, outrageously successful husband for help. But after a chance encounter in the subway, the loser's life changes.

Along with 455 other debtors and embezzlers running from creditors, he agrees to participate in a mysterious experiment. The adults will play the games they've known since childhood - but their lives are now at stake. Unmeasured riches await the champions (or champion?) of the tournament. The losers will suffer a brutal death. But even if Sung Ki Hoon and the other heroes escape physical death, it will be hard for them not to lose their moral character: "The Squid Game" requires the participants to give up everything human in them.

Is this really a new plot?

Not a second! Fantastic reality movies and shows in which poor people or slaves kill each other for the amusement of their lords have been around for at least 90 years.