Seoul, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Level Information – eleventh Oct, 2021 ) :Easy, candy, and fictionally deadly: the stallholder who makes the standard South Korean kids’s deal with featured within the world cultural phenomenon “Squid Recreation” — and as soon as related to post-war poverty — has hit a real-life jackpot.
The Netflix smash hit sequence contains a group of South Korea’s most marginalised and deeply in debt, who compete in kids’s video games for the prospect of 45.6 billion received ($38 million), with deadly penalties.
In a single explicit problem, the contestants attempt to minimize out shapes together with a star and an umbrella from a crisp sugar sweet referred to as a dalgona, with out it cracking — and people who fail are killed.
The life-or-death recreation was impressed by director Hwang Dong-hyuk’s expertise rising up in Seoul within the Seventies: however then, the prize for a kid who efficiently eliminated the form was one other free dalgona.
Hwang was all the time decided to win an additional deal with and remembers using a number of techniques in his efforts, together with licking the sweet to loosen the form and utilizing a needle heated over briquettes — methods repeated within the present’s nail-biting dalgona problem scene.
“I might make the dalgona maker extraordinarily perplexed by succeeding on probably the most troublesome form of umbrella,” the director lately mentioned in a YouTube video.
However the sweet was a troublesome prop to handle on set because it softens simply, particularly throughout South Korea’s humid wet season, so Hwang and inventive director Chae Kyung-sun employed “dalgona consultants” to have the sweet freshly made on location.
These specialists have been Lim Chang-joo and his spouse Jung Jung-soon, who produced between 300 and 400 dalgonas over three days of filming.
Now, their humble roadside stall in Seoul’s theatre district — little greater than an umbrella, an awning and their tools — is likely one of the hottest spots within the South Korean capital.
Orders for the two,000-won (about $1.70) sweets begin piling up as quickly because it opens, and earlier than lengthy, prospects face six-hour waits, with some giving up and leaving empty-handed.
In about 90 seconds, Lim melts a person portion of sugar above a burner, earlier than including baking soda, flattening it right into a circle, and punching it with the shopper’s most well-liked form.
He provides a wider vary of selections than the 4 kinds within the present — and has a newly added “N” for Netflix.
“I by no means imagined it might change into this common,” Lim instructed AFP of the sequence, including that his life has now change into “tremendous hectic”.
“In fact, I am pleased as a result of my enterprise is doing properly and the way dalgona has change into well-known in different international locations.
“I hope they make and eat their very own dalgonas,” he added.
– Monetary disaster – Historians say dalgona first emerged within the Sixties when the South was nonetheless assailed by post-war poverty whereas desserts — comparable to ice cream or goodies — weren’t broadly accessible and prohibitively costly.
Very candy, with hints of nuts and bitterness, the sweet was massively common, with many distributors establishing their stalls close to faculties.
Lim and Jung began their dalgona operation with 30,000 received after closing their tailoring enterprise of 20 years across the time of the 1997 Asian monetary disaster.
The candy endured all through the South’s rise to change into the world’s Twelfth-largest financial system, following a long time of speedy financial development through the authoritarian rule of the post-war interval.
And “Squid Recreation” is the newest manifestation of the ever-widening affect of the nation’s common tradition, epitomised by Okay-pop sensation BTS and the Oscar-winning film “Parasite”.
“South Korea has all the time been on the nexus of the trendy and pre-modern, Western instruments and Jap methods, and preserving the previous whereas sacrificing every part for the long run,” mentioned Michael Harm, who teaches cultural principle on the Korea Nationwide College of Arts.
“Dalgona is a nexus merchandise in a nexus tradition.”
