Let me explain gganbu from episode 6 of the squid game, which is popular all over the world.
The squid game comes out with a game that I enjoyed with my local friends when I was young. This drama explains children’s games well during the growth period of the 70s and 80s in Korea, but there are some differences, so I explain them.
In these days, the alley in front of the house was a place where children played.
Regardless of age, it can be said that local children gathered and played together.
There are games that require materials in children’s play.
For example, it is a game such as marbles and ddaji-game…
gganbu appears in this kind of play.
What is gganbu
Currently, even Koreans in their 40s and 50s do not know gganbu.
The reason is that gganbu is not a pre-registered word or a word learned in school.
It is a word spread through children.
Therefore, depending on the region, it is called ggambo or other words, not gganbu, but what has in common is that the pronunciation is similar.
(The neighborhood where I lived called ggambo.)
You can easily think of gganbu as an alliance.
It is an alliance that can share materials.
gganbu in marbles means my alliance to share marbles.
The reason why I need gganbu
When I’m playing marbles with my friend, the children in the neighborhood start to come out of the house one by one.
Seeing us playing marbles, they bring their marbles out of the house.
In the end, marbles are divided into teams and enjoyed together.
If you play marbles as a team like this, you will naturally have friends who will be on the same team next time, and this friend eventually becomes my gganbu.
However, if the relationship with the friend falls apart due to a minor dispute, gganbu terminates and forms gganbu with another friend.
Gganbu is
Gganbu is a word that was used in play when I was young.
Now that children are not gathering in the neighborhood, gganbu can be said to be a word that is no longer used.
No one seems to know the etymology of gganbu.
Because of the squid game, Koreans are bringing out their memories.
I see a lot of comments saying that it was like that back then.
Of course, there are opinions that they have not even heard the word gganbu, and that it was a word other than gganbu.
Korea is realizing the overseas popularity of squid games.
Netflix’s translation, which has been pointed out so far, seems to be a problem.
There are many mistakes when translating movies and dramas produced in Korean into other languages on Netflix.
In particular, in the case of squid games, it would have been really hard if a person who had no memories of this game had translated it into another language.
And it is not easy to translate because the meaning of Hangul varies depending on the situation.
In the future, I will also explain other games of the squid game.
- What is kkakdugi (the weakest link) in Squid Game?
- What is Dalgona in Squid Game?
- Actor Oh Yeong-su, Gganbu Grandpa in Squid Game
