Squid Game: Who is Player 67? Character explored in depth

With its premiere in September 2021, Netflix’s Squid Game quickly became a cult favorite globally. The show follows Seong Gi-hun, played by Lee Jung-jae, a gambler with a lot of debt, who enters a survival game called Squid Game, to win a large amount of money to pay off his debts.

Apart from Lee’s Gi-hun, several other players join the deadly game in season 1 of Squid Game. One of them was, Kang Sae-byeok, portrayed by model-turned-actress Jung Ho-yeon. Every player had a designated number like Gi-hun’s number was 456 and Sae-byeok was player 67.

While playing children’s games in the series and surviving, viewers saw many shades of different personalities of their favorite players. Of all those, Ho-yeon’s character Sae-byeok had the most heartbreaking growth arc. The North Korean defector entered the game to be reunited with her young brother whom she lost contact with.

Continue to read to know more about player 67, Kang Sae-byeok from Squid Game.

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Who is player 67, Kang Sae-byeok? character explored in depth

Kang Sae-byeok entered the game with a purpose like many others. She wanted to free her brother from the orphanage and have a better life. Initially, Ho-yeon’s Sae-byeok appeared to be cautious and distant from everyone else, a contrasting personality from player 456, Lee’s Gi-hun who wanted to form alliances and win together.

Because of her non-cooperative and secretive personality, she was only known as player 67 in the initial episodes of Squid Game. However, as the games were played, Ho-yeon’s Sae-byeok started to grow and trust the people around her. It all mainly happened after her opponent, Ji-yeong, played by Lee Yoo-mi, sacrificed herself, in the tricky game of ‘Marbles’, so that she could win and get her brother back.

This incident changed Sae-byeok completely and she started trusting and playing together with Lee Jung-jae’s Gi-hun. In the next game on the bridge, Sae-byeok plays together with Gi-hun but ends up being severely injured.

In the end, she is killed by player 218, Cho Sang-woo ( Park Hae-soo) before the last game of season 1 of Squid Game. Although Ho-yeon’s Kang died without winning, Lee’s character Gi-hun frees her brother from the orphanage and places him with San-woo’s elderly mother.

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More about the actress Jung Ho-yeon who plays Kang Sae-byeok.

Kang Sae-byeok is played by the up-and-coming actress Jung Ho-yeon in Squid Game season 1. She started as a freelance model in 2010 and competed in Korea’s Next Top Model in 2013. Since then, she has walked the ramp for many luxury brands, such as Gucci, Marc Jacobs, and Louis Vuitton.

Ho-yeon revealed in an interview with W Korea that being cast in the Squid Game series came as a surprise to her. She further added:

"It was shocking. When the CEO told me I was cast, the first thing I said was, "Why?" I was so happy, but I think I was also more scared than that. "I'm really grateful, but can I do this?"

She also revealed in the interview how she found Sae-byeok's character to be similar to her, adding:

"I watched a lot of documentaries about North Korean defectors. I also studied their lives by talking to a dialect teacher who is a settler. Above all, the reason I was able to accept Saebyeok without much difficulty was because Saebyeok and I were similar. I left Korea in 2016 and spent a lot of time alone while working as a model overseas until early last year. The emotion I felt the most at that time was 'loneliness'. Saebyeok also left his hometown and lived in Korea alone with his younger sibling without his parents. He was a pickpocket and I was a model, but it wasn't much different from feeling lonely and living alone in a foreign land."

Jung Ho-yeon has won a SAG award for her portrayal of Kang Sae-byeok and also received a Primetime Emmy nomination for the role.

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Catch both the seasons of Squid Game on Netflix.