The narrative of ¡°Hellbound¡± can be divided in two. The first half―episodes one to three―deals with the chaos that results from enhance enjoyment. In the survival game the characters play, however, the rules act as a system to justify killing and death. When people are dying all around you, you don¡¯t have the luxury of doubting the rules. You have to adapt to the preexisting structure of violence in the belief that you¡¯re receiving equal opportunities. In that world, even those who suffer death without protest are silent tools that justify the fairness of the rules. Thus, nobody doubts the rules of survival, that is to say, the structural violence.

Though Korea is handling the COVID-19 pandemic relatively well, it¡¯s also true that there is growing fear that the ladder of social advancement is being pulled away. The reason why Gi-hun and the other characters cannot escape the survival game is connected to this fear. They want to believe in their own efforts in the faith that, at least formally, they¡¯ve been given equal opportunities. They are oblivious to the fact that extreme violence in inherent in the rules and structure of the game. Or rather, they have little choice but to be oblivious, at least in the moment. Whatever the result, they can accept it as their God¡¯s unilateral and incomprehensible violence. In doubt at first, humanity gradually begins to accept its ¡°powerlessness.¡± In the second half―episodes four to six―the show demonstrates a situation in which the habit of branding our hatred of other people as ¡°the will of God¡± has taken over society. When blind faith becomes a hard social rule, doubt is no longer permissible. Seen thus, in the first half, God demands humanity imagine hell, while in the second half, the narrative stage is a society in which humans―having adjusted to irrational violence―cast hell on other humans.

In the Netflix original series ¡®Hellbound¡¯, individuals are brutally sentenced to hell with little warning or explanation.

The plot generates the most tension when an angel decrees a newly born infant is headed for hell. That an infant free of sin must be executed throws the New Truth Society―which has appropriated for itself the authority to interpret the will of God―into crisis. In the end, the infant survives. The infant¡¯s survival is not merely due to the sacrifices of its parents, who are unwilling to abandon their child. The miracle is also due to people who call for reason and a handful of neighbors who demand that human society have at least a minimum of justice. Anyway, season 2 will feature a struggle to see if humanity can recover reason and justice paralyzed by the scapegoat mechanism and violent dogma.

The taxi driver who appears in the series blurts out the following. ¡°What I know for certain is that this is humanity¡¯s world. In humanity¡¯s world, people must do things for themselves.¡± Expanding on this line, we can say that ¡°Squid Game¡± and ¡°Hellbound¡± put their finger firmly on what people must do for other people. That is what converges in the words ¡°fairness,¡± ¡°reason¡± and ¡°justice.¡± Seeing how the two series were global hits, it would seem there are many places outside of Korea that need those words, too.