Spoiler warning: This article discusses Ali Abdul’s full Season 1 arc, including the marbles game.
Ali Abdul is Player 199 in Squid Game Season 1: a Pakistani migrant worker in South Korea, played by Indian actor Anupam Tripathi. His employer has withheld six months of pay, leaving Ali unable to support his wife and young son and pushing him toward the game’s promised prize money. But Ali’s story is not designed merely to make viewers pity him. It gives the series one of its clearest tests of dignity: what does it mean to remain generous, capable and trusting when employers, debt and a lethal competition repeatedly treat a person as disposable?
Netflix’s account of the character is direct about the premise. Ali is exploited by his employer before the games begin; inside them, he saves Seong Gi-hun, becomes essential to the tug-of-war team and places his faith in Cho Sang-woo. The result is one of Squid Game’s most painful betrayals. (netflix.com)
Ali Is More Than the “Kind” Player
It is easy to remember Ali as the gentle contestant—the man who catches Gi-hun during “Red Light, Green Light,” or the powerful teammate who helps keep the rope taut in tug-of-war. Yet reducing him to innocence misses Tripathi’s performance.
Ali is alert, physically capable and deeply motivated by responsibility to his family. His warmth is an active choice, not evidence that he is unintelligent or helpless. He enters alliances because cooperation is rational in a game that initially rewards it. He trusts people after they have given him reasons to believe they are trustworthy.
Tripathi, who moved from India to South Korea to study acting, told Netflix that he recognized Ali’s persistence and described the character as gentle, honest and devoted to his family. He also emphasized trust as central to his approach to Player 199. (netflix.com)
That distinction matters. Ali’s fate should not be read as a lesson that migrant workers are naturally naïve, nor that trust is foolish. The show instead asks viewers to notice who gets rewarded for trusting and who gets punished for exploiting it.
The Withheld Wages Behind Player 199
Before Ali receives his green tracksuit, Squid Game shows a workplace confrontation: he asks for money he has already earned and is met with violence and contempt. The scene is fiction, and Ali is one individual character—not a stand-in for every migrant worker in South Korea. Still, wage arrears are a real labor-rights issue, including for foreign workers.
South Korea’s labor standards framework covers wages and working conditions, while the government’s public legal guidance states that a foreign worker who has not been paid can petition for overdue wages or file a criminal complaint over a Labor Standards Act violation. (moel.go.kr)
The gap between rights on paper and a worker’s ability to use them is part of the context that makes Ali’s desperation believable. The OECD has noted that restrictions around changing workplaces under the Employment Permit System can intensify employers’ power over some migrant workers and make it harder to seek better conditions. That does not mean every workplace operates this way; it means the series’ portrayal touches a documented structural vulnerability rather than inventing one from nothing. (oecd.org)
Ali’s unpaid wages are therefore not just backstory. They explain why the game’s cash prize can look like a rescue route even when its rules are horrifying. Debt and wage theft narrow choices long before the masked guards announce them.
Polite Korean, “Hyung,” and a Dangerous Shift in Status
Some of Ali’s most revealing characterization is carried by Korean that English subtitles can flatten. He often uses deferential speech, signaling caution and respect in a social world where age, familiarity and perceived rank can shape how people address one another.
Sang-woo eventually tells Ali to call him hyung (형), literally “older brother” when used by a younger man for an older man. In ordinary Korean use, it does not require a blood relationship. It can signal closeness, seniority, affection or a relationship in which the older person is expected to offer guidance. Analyses of the show’s translation have noted that English subtitles often render this shift simply as using Sang-woo’s name, losing some of the relational weight. (wired.com)
That makes the marbles episode more wrenching. Sang-woo does not merely form a tactical partnership with Ali; he accepts a more intimate, brother-like mode of address. Ali’s eventual cry of “hyung” is not proof that Korean kinship language itself causes betrayal. Rather, the show uses a familiar form of closeness to make Sang-woo’s deception feel more intimate.
Korean honorifics and kinship terms should also not be treated as a rigid script that controls every Korean interaction. People negotiate speech styles differently across generations, regions, workplaces and friendships. In Squid Game, language is a dramatic tool: it shows Ali trying to navigate both workplace hierarchy and the fragile social order among contestants.
Is Ali and Sang-woo’s Bond “Jeong”?
Jeong (정) is often described in English as affection, attachment or a deep interpersonal bond built through shared time and care. None of those translations fully contains it. Research on the concept also warns against turning it into a simple, universally positive national trait: jeong can involve closeness and trust, but social expectations around relationships can be complicated and uneven. (journal.kci.go.kr)
The series never labels Ali and Sang-woo’s connection as jeong, and their time together is brief. So it is more accurate to say that their relationship can be read through the lens of jeong, rather than declaring that it is jeong.
They share danger, food, strategy and moments of mutual reliance. Ali protects Gi-hun; Sang-woo appears to recognize Ali’s value and folds him into the group. The “hyung” invitation strengthens the sense that Ali has found not only allies but a place within a small circle of care.
That is why Sang-woo’s trick works. He does not overpower Ali. He uses the trust built through collaboration—and the expectation of protection embedded in their newly intimate address—to swap Ali’s marbles for stones.
The Marbles Game: Betrayal Is Sang-woo’s Choice
Ali’s elimination is often remembered as the moment the series becomes emotionally unforgiving. Sang-woo persuades him to look for other players’ marbles, then secretly exchanges the bag. When Ali realizes what happened, the game is over.
The scene should not be softened into an unavoidable result of Korean workplace hierarchy, jeong, or an abstract “survival instinct.” Sang-woo makes a specific choice: he deceives the person who trusted him. At the same time, Squid Game refuses a too-easy moral escape. Sang-woo is himself under extreme financial pressure and trapped in a contest engineered to turn need into violence.
Tripathi has said he does not simply blame Sang-woo, asking instead why someone would make such a choice. That perspective does not excuse the betrayal. It keeps the focus on the brutal system that pits indebted people against one another while preserving Sang-woo’s responsibility for what he does. (netflix.com)
Why Ali Abdul Still Matters
Ali’s arc makes structural exploitation personal without pretending one fictional man can represent a vast, diverse migrant-worker population. His character is Pakistani; Tripathi is Indian; the performance and the story should not erase that distinction. Nor should viewers assume that Ali’s workplace experience describes every foreign worker’s life in South Korea.
What Ali does represent is a moral challenge at the center of Squid Game: economic precarity becomes most dangerous when it strips people of bargaining power, safety and recognition. His employer withholds wages. The game values his labor and strength only while they serve others. Sang-woo recognizes his trust, then weaponizes it.
Yet Ali is never only what others take from him. Player 199’s lasting force comes from what he gives freely—help, loyalty, courage and a belief that solidarity might still be possible. His death hurts because the series lets us see that dignity clearly before another contestant chooses to betray it.
The actor behind Ali Abdul: Anupam Tripathi
Anupam Tripathi was born in India and moved to South Korea to study acting at Korea National University of Arts. After smaller stage and screen parts, Ali became his international breakthrough. His own experience building a career in Korea does not make him identical to Ali, but it gives useful context to the linguistic care, physical openness and dignity he brings to the role.
Follow the actor: Anupam Tripathi on Instagram · Netflix’s interview with Anupam Tripathi
