What Netflix’s Squid Game teaches employers about vicarious liability

When Netflix released Squid Game in September 2021, I intended on taking a pass but ultimately was overcome by an appreciation for (and curiosity about) South Korean film and television. In addition, the show inadvertently offers some keen insights into the employment law doctrine of “respondeat superior,” a type of vicarious liability.

Squid Game’s premise

As Wikipedia describes the show’s plot, Seong Gi-hun, a divorced and indebted chauffeur, is invited to play a series of children’s games for a chance at a large cash prize. Accepting the offer, he is taken to an unknown location, where he finds himself among 456 players who are all deeply in debt. They wear green tracksuits and are kept under watch at all times by masked guards in pink jumpsuits.

The games are overseen by the Front Man, who wears a black mask and uniform. The players soon discover that losing a game results in their death, with each death adding 100 million South Korean won (the equivalent of about $85,685 in U.S. dollars) to the grand prize of potentially about 45.6 billion won (or more than $39 million in American bucks). Gi-hun allies with other players, including his childhood friend Cho Sang-woo, to try to survive the games’ physical and psychological twists.

You lose, you die, but who’s responsible?

In facilitating the games, the masked guards in pink jumpsuits engage in a fair amount of violence, up to and including murdering the losing contestants. It’s pretty clear they’re doing so at the direction of the Front Man and their other bosses at Squid Game, Inc.