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In a dark room with neon lights, patrons are
greeted by staff dressed as the ominous hooded and masked guards
in the nine-part thriller, holding toy guns and ushering them
toward the end of the room where the "red light, green light"
playground game starts.
Customers hurry through a course and then freeze at the sound of
commands in Korean, fully immersed in the game, even though the
winners go home without any prizes.
"Not all cafes would actually imitate and make it exactly like
in the real show. I think it's unique and exciting so everyone
can feel how tense the Squid Game show is," 16-year-old student
Jennifer Susanto told Reuters after she failed to finish the
game.
Every day, more than 200 customers come to Cafe Strawberry,
drawn by the games from the Netflix series, which also include
chipping out a shape from dalgona candy.
The traffic has helped triple the cafe's earnings in the week
since it launched the games.
"Before this, when there was a PPKM (Enforcement of Community
Activity Restrictions), our income fell sharply. However, after
the PPKM rules were relaxed, our sales began to recover and
increase slightly," said Putra Priyadi, 39, the cafe's owner.
"But after we started the Squid Game event, our sales rose
significantly right away."
The dystopian drama "Squid Game", in which cash-strapped
contestants play childhood games with deadly consequences in a
bid to win 45.6 billion won ($38 million), was last week named
Netflix's biggest original series launch https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/skoreas-squid-game-is-netflixs-biggest-original-show-debut-2021-10-13,
streamed by 111 million accounts in 27 days.
It's especially popular in Indonesia, where Korean dramas and
Korean movies already have a large following.
(Writing by Kay Johnson; Editing by Karishma Singh and Gerry
Doyle)
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