\n<\/p>\n
In \u201cBargain,\u201d a new dystopian South Korean series on Paramount+, a man shows up at a hotel far from the city to consummate a deal. He is to pay a young woman for sex; the price is steep because she claims to be a virgin. But wait: It turns out she actually works for a criminal organ-auctioning operation, and the guy is about to unwillingly give up a kidney.<\/p>\n
Then an earthquake levels the hotel, initiating a desperate scramble for survival. And that\u2019s just the first 30 minutes or so.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s an almost comical amount of calamity in \u201cBargain,\u201d the latest offering in the push from Paramount+ into a robust South Korean streaming market that exploded with the popularity of Netflix\u2019s \u201cSquid Game\u201d in 2021. Like that show, which depicted debt-ridden citizens competing in a series of deadly, Darwinian children\u2019s games for the amusement of wealthy overlords, \u201cBargain<\/a>\u201d deals in dystopian extremes. (All six episodes begin streaming on Thursday.)<\/p>\n But these shows aren\u2019t serving up shock for its own sake. They use dark fantasy to confront issues that plague contemporary South Korean society, particularly the economic inequality fostered by capitalism run amok; social isolation in a frenzied tech boom; and a widespread distrust of government authority.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In a paradox of the South Korean streaming boom, shows that often dramatize desperate efforts to get a piece of the economic pie are proving to be big business. (Netflix, the world\u2019s biggest<\/a> streaming service, reported that 60 percent of its subscribers<\/a> worldwide had watched a Korean-language show or movie in 2022; the company plans to invest $2.5 billion<\/a> in South Korean content over the next four years.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve seen a lot of demand for international content across the globe, and Korean content particularly is a phenomenon in itself,\u201d Marco Nobili, the executive vice president and international general manager of Paramount+, said in a video interview. \u201cGlobalization has really brought that to light. So certainly Korea was a top market for us.\u201d<\/p>\n Paramount+ entered the arena<\/a> through a film and television partnership between its parent company, Paramount Global, and the South Korean media conglomerate CJ ENM. As part of that deal, Paramount+ and the Korean streaming giant TVing, which CJ ENM controls, committed to co-producing seven original Korean series, of which \u201cBargain\u201d is the second. The first, \u201cYonder,\u201d about a man who reconnects with his dead wife, debuted on Paramount+ in April. (Both premiered in South Korea, on TVing, in October 2022.)<\/p>\n At the same time, Paramount+ has begun building its K-drama library with hit shows from the CJ ENM vaults, including the 2016 procedural \u201cSignal<\/a>\u201d and a 2017 thriller about a religious cult, \u201cSave Me<\/a>,\u201d both of which also arrived in April.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n A dark, competitive thread runs through much of it; and just as the characters in Korea\u2019s many dystopian offerings must fight for survival, there seems to be a kind of \u201ccan you top this?\u201d contest happening among the shows themselves. The premise of \u201cBargain\u201d is a little more extreme than that of \u201cSquid Game.\u201d Paramount+\u2019s coming series \u201cPyramid Game,\u201d in which a bullied high school girl must become a sniper in order to survive a brutal game, looks to be yet another nightmare blood sport.<\/p>\n For Byun Seungmin, the creator of \u201cBargain,\u201d the idea of toxic competition is crucial.<\/p>\n \u201cIn South Korea, the issue of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer is severe,\u201d Byun said in a video interview last month through an interpreter. \u201cThere\u2019s a prevailing sense of defeat that if one isn\u2019t born into a good background, it\u2019s difficult to have a fair opportunity to achieve something.\u201d<\/p>\n In \u201cBargain,\u201d you can either afford to buy a kidney for your dying father (freshly carved from a captive), or you can\u2019t. You either run a criminal empire, or what\u2019s left of your body is fed to the fish. Near the end of the series, as the female and male lead characters (played by Jun Jong Seo and Jin Sun Kyu) try to escape the collapsing structure, one says to the other: \u201cIf we die here, we die for nothing.\u201d The response: \u201cPeople like us always die for nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cBargain,\u201d like \u201cSquid Game,\u201d offers the spectacle of millions in cash literally dangling above those who can grab it. Such images are laden with meaning, said the journalist Elise Hu, whose book \u201cFlawless\u201d is a deep examination of South Korea\u2019s booming beauty industry.<\/p>\n \u201cYou have this story in which body parts are actually getting fragmented, and organs sold and then harvested, so that you can put a price on a body,\u201d she said last month in a phone interview. \u201cIt all flows from this moment that South Korea is in with consumption, where you can buy all the things that you want and it\u2019s all money, money, money.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n As Byun put it, \u201cThe younger generation in Korea now believes unless the system collapses, or a disaster occurs where everyone becomes truly equal, there is no opportunity for the future.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBargain\u201d unfolds in a series of carefully choreographed long takes, the camera darting and gliding among the wreckage and creating a sense that, even in this dog-eat-dog world, everyone\u2019s fate is connected. The dearth of editing made it essential that everyone hit their marks and stay on the same page.<\/p>\n \u201cIt felt like a theater piece, or like I was playing a game of chess or Go,\u201d Jun, the female lead, said through an interpreter. \u201cThe series is quite experimental in terms of the scenario and also the structure.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The past few years have seen seismic change and even scandal in South Korean television and film. In 2017 the conservative president Park Geun-hye was removed from office<\/a> and later convicted on charges of bribery<\/a>, extortion and abusing her power, including the maintenance of a government blacklist<\/a> that denied state funding to thousands of artists deemed unfriendly to her administration or insufficiently patriotic. During the Park administration, more filmmakers subsequently sought funding and distribution from streamers \u2014 especially Netflix, Hu said.<\/p>\n Now the streaming frontier is wide open, and Paramount+ is staking its claim. Nobili, the Paramount+ executive, is particularly excited about the coming series \u201cA Bloody Lucky Day,\u201d about a taxi driver and a serial killer \u2014 shades of Michael Mann\u2019s hit man\/cabby movie \u201cCollateral.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Business, in other words, is promising. But if \u201cBargain\u201d stands to provide some wild entertainment for American audiences \u2014 and the promise of big revenue for its American streamer \u2014 Byun, its creator, seemed more focused on the culturally specific ways he hopes the series will speak about South Korea today. He described a country in which birthrates are plummeting and \u201cpeople tend to avoid communication with others.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThey express anger about many things, claiming the value of fairness,\u201d he continued. The characters in \u201cBargain,\u201d he added, \u201creflect the masses in modern South Korea who seem to have lost hope, and even among them there is a rift.\u201d<\/p>\n And yet where there is collapse \u2014 of a building, an entertainment industry, a society \u2014 there is also the hope for renewal.<\/p>\n \u201cCollapse is not the end but a new beginning,\u201d Byun said. \u201cAfter going through the collapse, the characters inadvertently gain an opportunity to start over in a more primitive era where equality prevails.<\/p>\n \u201cI believe this also reflects the psyche of the public, desiring the end of the period they\u2019re living in so that a new one can arise.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n