Summary
- Jun Hee defied odds due to her pregnancy but played a key role in team success.
- Kim Jun Hee’s compassion towards her ex saved him from a violent death in the game.
- Despite being an unlikely survivor, Jun Hee remains alive at end of Squid Game Season
Squid Game Season 2 featured standard character additions—such as Dae Ho, Jung Bae, Thanos, and Ming Su—that rivaled the previous season with regard to complexity, emotional depth, and richly-done development. Far from a fan favorite, Jo Yu-ri’s Kim Jun Hee deserves praise for the simple act of making it to the very end of the second season of Squid Game.
Pregnant, highly emotionally unstable, and vulnerable, Jun Hee is a character many viewers initially deemed unlikely to survive past one or two tasks. But having the right friends and teammates ensured she beat expectations and pulled through, even when many other arguably more deserving characters didn’t. Already with one of the saddest and mistake-laden backstories in Squid Game, Jun Hee dying would undoubtedly have been one of the saddest in the seven-episode season.
Related
Squid Game Season 3 is Coming Sooner Than Expected
Squid Game Season 3 is arriving sooner than expected, with Netflix accidentally revealing when the final season of the series will arrive.
How Did Jun Hee End Up on the Island?
Heartbreak and Bad Investment
Kim Jun Hee’s route to the life-or-death games of Squid Game is as sad as any other. She became an orphan in childhood and had to survive on her own. In her later years, she gets intimately entangled with a YouTube streamer-turned-cryptocurrency influencer, Lee Myung-gi—known in the streets as MG Coin. Jun Hee’s relationship with Myung-gi and her strong will for financial freedom influence her decision to invest in a coin called Dalmatian. However, it proves to be an unwise decision as the coin is a scam. Jun Hee consequently loses all of her fortune accumulating crushing debts along the way.
Jun Hee’s first appearance in the series is when she visits a gynecologist, as she calls Myung-gi who refuses to answer the phone. At the same time, it is revealed that she received the Squid Game invitation card from the recruiter—the same one from Season 1—before coming to the gynecologist clinic. Provoked by Myung-gi’s disappearance, the discovery of her pregnancy, and the thirst for financial stability to cater to her unborn child fuel, Jun Hee decides to give the games a try.
The Reunion With Her Now-Ex-Boyfriend Takes an Emotional Toll
Jun Hee’s first test after surviving the infamous “Red Light, Green Light” game was the unexpected reunion with her now-ex-lover, Lee Myung-gi. Unsurprisingly, Jun Hee’s interactions with Myung-gi are anything but rosy, especially given the latter’s sudden disappearance. It is tense as Jun Hee battles to stay focused despite her flooding emotions. Worse, she discovers that he still holds his greedy, cryptocurrency-obsessed persona. Jun Hee decides to cut ties with Myung-gi and focus on winning the game.
What Happens to Jun Hee In the Game?
Gi-Hun’s Compassion Is Key To Jun Hee Finding a Team
“Six-legged pentathlon” is the next game after the “Red light, Green light”. This game requires each participant to form a group of five. Similar to the previous edition of the games in the first season, participants hastily begin huddling into groups as failure to find one before the commencement of the game spells elimination and death. Jun Hee experiences some difficulty joining a team, getting rejected once her potential teammates get a whiff of her pregnancy. Myung-gi offers her shelter in his group, but she vehemently rejects the offer. Time ticks and Jun Hee approaches Gi-Hun and Dae-Jo with a request to be their fifth member. Despite just recently picking one, they eject him in her favor.
In the six-legged pentathlon, each member of the team is required to choose one of five games available to play. A team can only move to the next round when a member succeeds in the game he or she chooses. The games involved in this pentathlon are “Flying Stone,” “Ddakji,” “Gongi,” “Spinning Top,” and “Jedi.” Jun Hee’s team bids her to play “Gongi” on the grounds that it’s a “girl’s game”. As she doesn’t play “Gongi,” she opts instead for “Ddakji”—to the surprise of her teammates. Her team is the last to go, and Jun Hee is instrumental to its success after aceing her “Ddakji” in one throw.
Jun Hee Still Cares For Lee Myung-gi
Right after the third game, the players vote to either continue or stop playing. Jun Hee’s option is to quit, and she hits the “X” button. The results of the vote come in as a stalemate, and a mini-civil war ensues between the “X” faction—the wanna-be quitters—and the “O” faction—those determined to see the game through at all costs. Jun Hee is briefed on Gi-Hun’s escape plan when she discovers that the opposing team is plotting an attack. Gi-Hun warns them to seek refuge under the bunk bed for the night and Jun Hee—setting aside bad blood in an act of love—aids Myung-gi with this tip, saving him from certain death at the hands of the “O” rioters.
To break the stalemate, one faction must convince the other to join their train before the next poll. Tensions rise into a brawl when Myung-gi and others who want to end the game find themselves in the restroom with members of the opposite faction. In an act of self-defense, Myung-gi stabs Thanos in the neck, giving him one of the most unforgettable deaths in Squid Game Season 2. Although both factions lose several members, the numbers are in favor of the quitters. Bitter at their dwindling numbers, the “O” faction, plot a violent revenge.
Jun Hee Is An Unlikely Survivor In Squid Game Season 2
Jun Hee’s self-preservation undoubtedly saves her from an untimely end in Squid Game Season 2—a season that saw mighty and brave characters, such as Thanos and Jung Bae, fall. She hid during the “O” faction’s attack on the X faction, unwilling to get caught in the bloodshed. When Gi-hun and the other players fought against the masked enforcers, she also sat it out, instead, watching from the sidelines and hoping they would succeed so she could finally leave the game alive. And alive she is…for now.
More
Squid Game: 8 Questions That Need To Be Answered In Season 3
With Season 2 ending on a cliffhanger, Season 3 of Squid Game needs to give viewers the answers they’re desperate for.