A South Korean man has recently reported that he has been bombarded with thousands of calls daily as his number appeared in one of the episodes of the popular Squid Game Netflix show.
According to a report by South China Morning Post, the unnamed man was offered 100 million won ($85,000) by a presidential candidate Huh Kyung-Young in exchange of the phone number. The number is now getting about 4,000 rings a day.
Huh Kyung-young, the National Revolutionary Party’s honorary chief, took to his social media handle stating that he was interested to buy the same phone number for 100 million. “I heard that the owner of the phone number shown on a business card in Squid Game is suffering serious damage from prank calls. I would like to buy the number for 100 million won,” Huh Kyung-young said in a Facebook post. Last month, Huh Kyung-young announced his bid for the presidency.
The man in his 40s, currently living in Gyeonggi Province told broadcaster MBC (Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation) that he was getting around 4,000 phone calls a day. He said at first he thought they were spam calls as he was not aware of the Netflix series. He found out what was going on only after one of the callers told him that his number was shown on the programme.
He told MBC that he can’t change his number as he has been using the current one for 10 years and it is linked with his business. He claimed that even his wife is suffering as she has the same number except for the last digit. He said he is even using sleeping pills to help him to sleep during this stressful situation.
Notably, this is the second time that such a scenario is happening. Last time it was with a Sharjah-based Indian expat whose number appeared in one of the episodes of Sacred Games Netflix show.
According to the Hankook Ilbo, the sister paper of the Korea Times, Netflix said the drama production company is in negotiations with the phone number owner to resolve the issue.
It hasn’t been a complete month since the release of Squid Game show, yet the show is on its track to become the number one Netflix show. Ted Sarandos, Co-CEO of Netflix has recently told CNET that Squid Game could top the streaming service’s charts – becoming the biggest show ever.
