Similarities (and differences) between Yong-sik and Billy
Edit (Jan 12, 2026): hello there, this is gonna be left unfinished, it was gonna be way longer but then my mind decided to kill itself and my motivation to finish this just disappeared 🥲 I hope you enjoy it even if it’s not finished at all, hell I’ll probably even edit it at some point and finish it *IF* my motivation comes back…😅 read the warning below. (You should probably read the tags too I explain a lot more in detail there too)
Warning that even though it’s been about almost 5 months since Squid Game ended I’ll still put a spoiler warning for season 3 and honestly I don’t think I’ll be tackling much about season 5 of ST here so yeah and there might be grammar mistakes and stuff…I’m not the best writer lmao. Also I’ll be talking in defense of both of these characters, I love them both very much so please even if you don’t like them don’t send hate my way‼️ Also if I missed any key details please let me know.
I do this this a lot with the characters I end up fixating on, I always see how they are so similar to each other to the point where I feel like if they were in the same room they would find common ground even if their experiences are different and end up empathizing with each other as a result.
And that’s what I’m doing now!
I started fixating on Yong-sik very late July to early August and the fixation (along with my fixation of Cho Hyun-ju) is still ongoing, then Thanksgiving weekend rolls around and I end up watching ST Season 5 with my family, and once it was finally over I went back to see how the Billy fans were doing and honestly through looking through most of @stranger-rants posts that I have missed in a long while it made me realize that Yong-sik and Billy are quite similar! And of course have their differences as well.
Firstly we will start with the similarities:
This one is definitely the most obvious and biggest similarity they have: they are both abuse victims. Park (Yong-sik’s dad) was an unfaithful piece of shit and he physically abused Geum-ja (Yong-sik’s mom) and even though Yong-sik has never mentioned that he himself was physically abused by his father, he witnessed it from a young age most likely and it’s still a very likely chance that he was physically abused by his dad even if it wasn’t explicitly said. Neil (Billy’s dad) was abusive to Billy in many ways but the one we mostly saw in the show was physical as well. Neil was abusive to his mother as well and Billy always tried to stand up for her, pushing Neil away so he won’t hurt her but because of how young he was, there was little he could do to stop the abuse.
They are have unhealthy coping mechanisms (addictions): In the majority of screen-time Billy had in season 2, all we ever see him drink is beer which is not healthy for a then 17 year old who was still developing 😭 and he also smokes a shit ton of cigarettes…he uses these things to cope with what’s going on at home and possibly to help with some issues he has himself (like undiagnosed anxiety perhaps). When Geum-ja speaks to Gi-hun after Hide and Seek, she mentions how Yong-sik has always blamed himself for things that were out of his control, then she mentions that a “trusted friend” of his ran away with his money and that he drank himself stupid that night, so he copes with alcohol (and might’ve lowkey became an alcoholic) and he also has a gambling addiction…which pretty obvious because a lot of the Squid Game players (not all of them though) are there partially due to gambling debts and other factors in their life.
Death: They both die horrific deaths that they DID NOT DESERVE…and if I say anymore than this I’m gonna fucking cry…
I think that’s most of ther of similarities, lowkey kinda lied when I said I saw a lot of similarities because they both live completely different lives but of course I can’t always be so sure, there might be more similarities than meets the eye is just that those were the most two obvious to me.
Now let’s look at the differences:
Their mothers: I had a big ass paragraph for this one then it got accidentally deleted when it moved to the similarities part and I’m so fucking mad so I’ll just briefly explain. Billy’s mom abandoned him with their abuser while Geum-ja ended up divorcing and leaving their abuser with Yong-sik. Billy became his dad’s scapegoat and wasn’t able to escape his abuse and was very isolated, his isolation becoming worse when Neil marries Susan and in just a few months they move MILES away from California to bum fuck Hawkins, Indiana, away from immediate family…away from home, away from anyone who can help. Yong-sik and Geum-ja were able to escape, hell their abuser even dies at some point before they join Squid Game, though they were probably not able to afford proper therapy for what they’ve been through (and also because the social norms in Korea might have to do with them not getting therapy as well), they still remained together and have a somewhat stable parent-child relationship, their lives aren’t easy though especially because of the trouble Yong-sik ends up getting into because of his crippling debt.
Support: it kind of ties in to the paragraph above but it’s very clear that Yong-sik has a support system
