Lee Jung-jae, the actor whose dalgona scene made this candy world-famous. Photo: K-POPIT, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
A hush falls over a hundred players in green tracksuits. Each is handed a tin of brittle honeycomb candy with a shape pressed into it — a circle, a triangle, a star, an umbrella — and ten minutes to carve that shape out without cracking it. Snap the line, and you’re dead. Seong Gi-hun (성기훈), played by Lee Jung-jae, looks down and realizes he has drawn the umbrella. The hardest one.
That scene, from Episode 3 of Netflix’s Squid Game (오징어게임), turned a humble Korean street snack into a global obsession overnight. But here’s the part most viewers never learned: the candy is real, it’s called dalgona (달고나), and Korean kids had been playing — and cheating at — this exact game for decades before Gi-hun ever picked up a needle.
The umbrella that almost killed Gi-hun
The four shapes, exactly as the show used them. The umbrella (우산) is the assassin. Photo: LATE&LATE, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The game — called the “sugar honeycomb” round — is brutally simple. Four shapes, four difficulty levels. The circle (동그라미) is a gift. The triangle (세모) is fine. The star (별) is a challenge. And the umbrella (우산), with its thin curved handle and all those little ribs, is a near-impossible death sentence. Gi-hun, of course, picks the umbrella.
“Foreign viewers saw a death game. Koreans saw a childhood.”
He isn’t alone in his panic. Cho Sang-woo (조상우), played by Park Hae-soo, immediately clocks the shape he chose and works the odds like the ex-investment banker he is. Kang Sae-byeok (강새벽), played by Jung Ho-yeon, takes the needle with the same cold focus that carried her through every other round. The tension is unbearable — and it’s all riding on a piece of candy you can buy for pocket change on a Korean street.
Park Hae-soo as Sang-woo — the ex-banker who ran the odds even on a piece of candy. Photo: Elle Taiwan, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Korean kids beat this game for decades
Long before Netflix, this was just after-school life: crouch around the cart, win a free one. Photo via Wikimedia Commons (public record image).
Here’s what the drama never explained. The dalgona challenge wasn’t invented for the show — it’s an old Korean street game, sometimes called ppopgi (뽑기, “the pick”). A vendor would melt sugar at a cart, stamp a shape, and hand it to a kid with a simple deal: carve out the shape cleanly and you win a second one, free. Crack it, and you just paid for a snack. For generations of Korean kids, the umbrella was already the shape you prayed you wouldn’t get.
So when Gi-hun stares down that umbrella, older Korean viewers aren’t just watching a thriller. They’re watching a childhood memory turned into a matter of life and death — which is exactly why the scene hit so hard at home.
The trick: lick the back
Thin, brittle, and unforgiving — one wrong bit of pressure and the whole disc snaps. Photo: PhareannaH[berhabuk], CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Cornered, Gi-hun does the thing every Korean kid eventually figures out: he flips the candy over and licks the back. His saliva and warmth melt the sugar just enough to loosen the seams around the shape, so the umbrella lifts out clean. Other players notice, start licking too, and the guards — who clearly never grew up on a Korean street — are left baffled. It’s the oldest trick in the book, and it’s the whole reason the “dalgona challenge” exploded on TikTok and YouTube worldwide. I tried it myself with a store-bought disc, and the trick works exactly as advertised — a little spit and patience, and the shape lifts right out.
That’s the magic of the scene: a global audience thought they were learning a clever hack, while Koreans were nodding along at a shortcut they’d known since grade school.
So what is dalgona, actually?
Strip away the tracksuits and the drama, and dalgona (달고나) is almost embarrassingly simple: sugar and a pinch of baking soda. You melt sugar in a small ladle until it turns golden, drop in a tiny bit of baking soda, and it foams up into a light, airy toffee. Pour it flat, press it thin, stamp a shape — done. Two ingredients, one childhood in a disc.
Want to see the whole thing made from scratch, ladle and all? This short breakdown walks through it:
One candy, a whole cast on edge
Jung Ho-yeon as Sae-byeok — she took the needle with the same nerve she brought to every round. Photo: Ariela Ortiz-Barrantes, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
What makes the dalgona round land isn’t the candy — it’s who’s holding it. The show spends two episodes making you care about Gi-hun, Sang-woo, and Sae-byeok, and then hands each of them a brittle disc and a needle. Even the ones watching from the sidelines, like detective Hwang Jun-ho (played by Wi Ha-joon) tracking the game from the shadows, are pulled into its orbit. A snack becomes a scale that weighs their lives.
Off-screen, it’s just a sweet, cheap street treat — best eaten before it cracks. Photo: 동운맘, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
That’s the trick of Squid Game in one round: it takes the most innocent thing imaginable — a candy kids beg for after school — and makes you hold your breath over it. And it sent millions of people worldwide scrambling to melt sugar in a ladle, umbrella side up, just to feel a sliver of what Gi-hun felt.
Wi Ha-joon as detective Jun-ho — tracking the games from the shadows. Photo: Elle Taiwan, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
A few quick questions people always ask
What episode is the dalgona game in Squid Game? Season 1, Episode 3, titled “The Man with the Umbrella” (우산을 쓴 남자). It’s named after the umbrella-shaped dalgona that Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) is stuck with.
What is the Squid Game dalgona trick? Licking the back of the candy. The warmth and saliva melt the sugar just enough to loosen the shape’s edges so it pops out without cracking — a shortcut real Korean kids have used for decades.
Is dalgona hard to make? No — it’s just sugar and a pinch of baking soda melted in a ladle and pressed flat. The hard part isn’t making it; it’s carving out the shape (especially the umbrella) without breaking the disc.
Want to taste the real thing?
You don’t need a green tracksuit — just a street cart. Dalgona is classic Korean street food, and the fastest way to find it (plus a hundred other snacks worth the trip) is to wander a proper market. Start with the street-food stalls of Gwangjang Market, or plan a whole eating trip with our what-to-eat-in-korea food guide.
And if you do try the challenge at home: pick the umbrella, lick the back, and spare a thought for Player 456. In Korea, that’s not a death game — it’s just Tuesday after school.
Squid Game (Netflix, 2021), Episode 3 “The Man with the Umbrella,” and the dalgona game details are a matter of record; cast per official credits. Video: Insider Food, “How Dalgona From Squid Game Is Made.” Photos credited inline (CC via Wikimedia Commons).