Jang Deok-su (Player 101): The gangster who came to the game because of his debts and played it the way he lived

In the fourth episode of Squid Game (Netflix, 2021), the guards hand out a meagre dinner and several players are left with nothing. One of them accuses Jang Deok-su, player 101, who is eating in a corner with his men, of having taken more than his share. Deok-su beats him to death in front of everyone. The guards watch and do not intervene; they remove the body, and the giant piggy bank hanging over the dormitory adds another hundred million won to the prize. That same night, with the lights out, Deok-su’s gang attacks the others. This gangster came to the game on the run from his own gang and from a casino in the Philippines, to whom he owed money, and inside he does what he did outside: he takes what he wants the moment he wants it. Gottfredson and Hirschi have a name for that.

// The theoryI want it now, whatever the cost

In A General Theory of Crime (1990), Michael Gottfredson and Travis Hirschi argued that low self-control explains most crime. Those who have it seek immediate gratification, are impulsive, take risks, tolerate frustration poorly and pay little attention to others. That is why they do not specialize: low self-control produces versatility, crimes of every kind alongside other risky behaviors, such as gambling, drinking or debt. According to the authors, the trait forms in childhood and remains stable throughout life.

// The subjectThe dormitory thug

Deok-su is not a strategist like the Front Man or a manipulator like Sang-woo. He is a man who understands the world as a chain of threats and knows how to survive in it: he spots the weak, seeks out the strong and always sides with power. That way of living has worked for him on the street and seems to work for him in the game, until it stops working. There is no remorse or doubt in him; only immediate calculation and fear, which he shows on the glass bridge when the risk no longer depends on his strength.

His relationship with Han Mi-nyeo, player 212, is the whole sequence in miniature. In the third episode she saves his honeycomb challenge by smuggling in a lighter to heat the sweet. In the fourth, in the toilets, they seal their alliance and she warns him that she will kill him if he betrays her. Shortly afterwards, when teams must be formed for the tug of war, Deok-su picks only strong men and leaves her out; she ends up on Gi-hun’s team, which survives. On the glass bridge in the seventh episode, the man who ruled the dormitory refuses to move forward and forces the others to test the panels for him. Mi-nyeo steps onto his panel, wraps her arms around him and jumps. For Gottfredson and Hirschi, the offender with low self-control does not weigh the medium-term cost of his actions: Deok-su pays it in full view of everyone, in the same game he thought he was winning.

// The crackA game designed for losing control

Low self-control theory attributes behavior to a stable individual trait, but Squid Game is an environment designed to push towards violence: the organizers turn off the lights, display the accumulated money and reward every elimination. Many players with no record end up killing. If context is enough to make ordinary people lose control, the trait explains less than it seems.

Moreover, Deok-su is not just impulsive: he knows how to form alliances, choose victims and take advantage of the tip-offs that player 111, the doctor who trades with the guards, passes on to him about the next game. The theory has been criticized for measuring self-control from the very crimes it claims to explain, and for underestimating many offenders’ capacity to plan.