The Sound of Squid Game: Jung Jae-il’s Score and Where to Listen

The score that runs under Squid Game is the work of Jung Jae-il, the Korean composer who scored Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite before this became his television debut. Its most recognizable cue, the main theme “Way Back Then,” is built from instruments most Koreans first touched in elementary school — and that choice is the whole trick. Here is who made the music, the tracks worth knowing, and where to stream it.

Who wrote it

Director Hwang Dong-hyuk brought in Jung Jae-il after the acclaim for his Parasite work, and Jung composed the bulk of the series’ cues. He did not do it entirely alone: he collaborated with Park Min-ju, and the composer Kim Sung-soo — who works under the name 23 — is credited with several of the sharper, more electronic tracks, including the one most people can hum without knowing its title.

The tracks that define it

• “Way Back Then” — the main theme, and Jung’s signature move. He scored it for recorder and castanets, the instruments of a Korean grade-school music class, and built the rhythm on the 3-3-7 clap — the cheer pattern Koreans use to root someone on. It plays in the very first episode, under Gi-hun’s childhood narration and his game of ddakji with the Salesman.
• “Pink Soldiers” — the marching, vaguely menacing motif tied to the masked guards, composed by 23. If a single piece of this soundtrack escaped the show and went viral on its own, it was this one.
• The S3 score — Jung returned for the final season, and that soundtrack is on streaming alongside the earlier music.

Why childlike instruments make it worse (on purpose)

The reason the music sticks is the gap it opens. A recorder-and-castanet melody and a playground cheer-rhythm belong to childhood; the violence on screen does not. Jung scores the contrast rather than the action — old, innocent sounds laid under modern cruelty — which is the same engine the games themselves run on: harmless children’s play turned lethal. It is restraint used as dread, and it is why a plain little theme can feel sinister.

Listen for what the score doesn’t do. It rarely swells to tell you how to feel. It stays small and familiar, and that familiarity is the unsettling part.

Where to listen

The Squid Game soundtracks are on the major streaming services — Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music — under Jung Jae-il for the score cues and 23 for the tracks credited to that name. The original-season album dropped in September 2021; the final-season soundtrack is up as well. If you are new to it, start with “Way Back Then,” then “Pink Soldiers,” then let the album’s quieter cues play in order — they reward attention away from the picture more than most TV scores do.

If Jung’s name is new to you, his Parasite score is the obvious next listen, and it makes the through-line in his work plain: a single, plain melodic idea, placed exactly, doing quiet and disquieting work.

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