Squid Game's English Subtitles Mistranslated An Important Season 3 Line
A few words can make a huge difference.
Ever since Squid Game premiered, viewers fluent in Korean have emphasized that the English translation dubs and subtitles leave out specific details. Some of these lost-in-translation tidbits are superfluous, and don’t majorly affect how you digest the overall story, but a key line in the show’s third and final season is being called out for completely altering how English viewers understand a main character’s backstory.
The misunderstood person is Dae-Ho, better known as Player 388 within the game. In Season 2, he introduced himself to Gi-hun as a former marine, which led Gi-hun to entrust him with leading his rebellion against the guards. However, in Season 2’s finale, Dae-Ho proved to be suspiciously ill-equipped for combat, becoming overwhelmed by the gunfire and abandoning his troop.
In Season 3, Dae-Ho comes clean about his true backstory, which is more complicated than the English translation would lead you to believe. During his climactic scene in the final season, Dae-Ho’s English dub and subtitles have him saying: “I didn’t even serve in the military. I’ve never even held a gun.”
This translation makes it sound like Dae-Ho was flat-out lying this whole time. But in his native tongue, he’s actually making a more specific clarification. As fans on Reddit have pointed out, the Korean line more accurately translates to: “I was a social service personnel. I’ve never even properly shot a gun.”
This slight difference opens up so much more about Dae-Ho’s real motivations. In South Korea, social service personnel (SSP) is an alternate path to the country’s required military service. Instead of entering the military, SSP receive basic training and then perform public service roles to fulfill their obligation. The program is typically for citizens who are deemed unfit for active duty.
The detail is an important facet to illuminating why Dae-Ho claimed to be an ex-marine — he was unable or unwilling to serve in the military for one reason or another, which instilled a sense of shame in him that he was hoping to deal with in the game.
