Jung Jae-il: Squid Game & Parasite Soundtracks

South Korean dramas Parasite and Squid Game have been worldwide hits — and Jung Jae‑il’s scores have played a key role in their success.

Jung Jae‑il’s score for Squid Game is so perfectly in sync with the Netflix show’s unique imagery, it’s hard to believe that the South Korean composer hadn’t visited the sets until well after the thriller had become a worldwide phenomenon. Jae‑il finally got the chance before he began scoring seasons two and three “under extreme confidentiality. They had all the cameras on my phone taped up.”

The third and reportedly final season of Squid Game has been one of the most highly anticipated TV events in recent years.This didn’t hinder the composer’s process in any way, it turns out, because his inspiration comes from an entirely different source. “For me, film is an art of editing, so I don’t get inspired as much from physically visiting a set. What is written into the script is what inspires me more, and I match that with the scoring and the scenes. I must say, though, the deadline is what really inspires me the most!”

Creating On The Clock

Jae‑il has been learning to create within practical constraints since he was a young child. By the time he was four he was already playing the piano, and before he became a teenager, he had taught himself to play all of the instruments on Metallica’s Master Of Puppets. An impressive feat, especially since this was well before YouTube provided music tutorials on tap. He became a professional musician aged 12 and was soon touring the country as part of a funk band, learning about performing for an audience and what it meant to work with an ensemble.

Jae‑il himself doesn’t appear to find any of this particularly exceptional, because all he was focused on at the time was earning a living as a working musician. “There were days when I was practising my guitar and I would go at it for 10 hours a day; I was completely absorbed by it and crazy for it. And then, I think anyone who has been in a band will know that because of the nature of what it’s like to be in a band, you pick up on other instruments, right? I wouldn’t say that I mastered any of them, it’s just that I can play them. I know how to play them, but I don’t think I could be paid to play them.”

When he wanted to study orchestration, he taught himself, starting with a deep dive into a piece that had moved him as a child: Mozart’s Requiem. He has since worked on several orchestral scores, including the Baroque‑inspired soundtrack for the four‑time Oscar‑winning film Parasite, but the lack of formal training posed challenges that Jae‑il is acutely aware of. He says of his process, “Because I was self‑taught, it’s very messy. To be very honest, I always wanted to learn formally, but I was hesitant and I missed the opportunity to do so. I didn’t get into the school and that’s why I ended up having to teach myself. There is a lot that is not in line with the theories taught in school, and it takes a lot longer for me.

“I will say though, the strength of being self‑taught is that I once had a director say to me, when they heard what I had created, ‘Hey, they teach you in schools not to do this, but it actually sounds really good!’”

Jae‑il progressed by learning from what he loved, absorbing lessons from the electronic sounds of Björk, the hypnotic bass of Massive Attack and the ambient magic of Brian Eno, and incorporating it all into his musical language. He scored his first feature film at 15, released a solo album at 20, and spent the next couple of years writing number one pop hits for Korean artists like Park Hyo Shin and IU. He had achieved his goal of becoming a working musician.

Left Field

Jung Jae‑il’s first taste of worldwide success came with his score for the Oscar‑winning movie Parasite.Then, in 2020, as the world was closing down thanks to the pandemic, Jae‑il’s world was about to start really opening up. Parasite made history at that year’s Oscars as the first non‑English movie to win the Best Picture award. Then Squid Game seemingly came out of nowhere to become Netflix’s most‑watched show ever and a legitimate global phenomenon.

Jae‑il’s multi‑genre score perfectly complemented the thriller’s impossibly bright colours and stylised costumes. Children’s instruments such as recorders and castanets sat next to traditional Korean instruments that made way for distorted guitars and delicate piano, creating a world that neither looked nor sounded like anyone expected. Take ‘Way Back Then’, the title track from season one, for example. It started out as a backup tune that Jae‑il worked on but was nervous to present to the director because of its unconventional instrumentation. He performed a simple melody on a recorder, built around a 3‑3‑7 clapping rhythm that is popular as a sports day cheer in South Korea. His lack of recorder playing skills meant that he hit a D# when he meant to play a D, but the director liked it, and it made the final cut, eventually becoming one of the show’s signature pieces.

The standout piece ‘Vote I’ underscores one of the tensest sequences in season two: a vote, the outcome of which could literally be the difference between life or death for all involved. Jae‑il eschews histrionics and lets the music hang in the air, ripe with tension. “When you think about the act of voting, it can reveal the duality of human nature. Sometimes it makes way for insanity, where the conflict between your side and the other side becomes extremely intense, and then there are also concerns of a betrayal that may take place within your own side, too, so I wanted to portray something that was more subtle and minimal rather than have something dramatic.”

The effect is powerful. When an emotional piece leaves space, the listener can sit with their emotions rather than drowning in big, sweeping strings. Jae‑il’s deliberate use of silence comes from his own experience as a viewer of art. “When you look at certain paintings from Asia, especially those created during the Ming Dynasty, you will see mountains, a forest, and then, mysteriously, where there is nothing that has been drawn into...