Listen, okay? I know that we've never met, at least not in person, but the boss told me, uh, how much he trusted you. You were a stand-up guy who voluntarily paid his debts. He told me that there was nobody else...
Choi Woo-seok in "Halloween Party" to Seong Gi-hun
Choi Woo-seok (최우석 Choe U-seog?), also known as Mr. Choi, is an employee and best friend of Mr. Kim, who later joins forces with Seong Gi-hun and Hwang Jun-ho in tracking down the location of the mysterious island where the annual Squid Games competitions are held.
History[]
When Woo-seok was young, he was scammed and lost all his money. He got so furious that he attacked the imbecile of the scammer. Woo-seok didn't leave him seriously injured, but the cops arrested him and told him to settle with the scammer, but Woo-seok had no money since the fool of the scammer stole it all, Woo-seok went to prison and the scammer ran away with the money, what made that Woo-seok distrust the cops. Woo-seok also served in the military. Years later, Woo-seok began working for Kim Jeong-rae (a loan shark owner of a clandestine organization called Sunshine Capital), who became his best friend and was like a brother to him. Mr. Kim officiated Mr. Choi's wedding and Mr. Choi also had a daughter.
In 2022, Seong Gi-hun (a man who owed Mr. Kim money in 2020) hired Mr. Kim to search for The Recruiter, a man who recruited players for the Squid Games (a competition held by masked men every year in which indebted people played kids' games to win a Prize money of ₩45,600,000,000 and people were killed if they lost; in which Mr. Seong was the winner in 2020) and the Loan sharks looked for the Recruiter from 2022 to 2024.
2024[]
Bread and Lottery[]
On June 19, 2024, Gi-hun told Mr. Kim to gather more men for the next day and expand the search from the first train to the last to check all the lines at the same time, but they didn't find that guy. Gi-hun paid Mr. Kim a lot of money and Mr. Kim got into the van his men were in, Mr. Kim told Woo-seok that starting the next day, they would need all the people they had and he wanted them ready by 6 a.m., so he told them not to get drunk and to go to sleep. The men had their doubts about the situation and Woo-seok told Mr. Kim that he didn't see any sense in Gi-hun's story, although Mr. Kim said that most of the people who owed him money disappeared over the years and he never got any money back (probably because they died in the Squid Games). Woo-seok asked Mr. Kim if he believed that his debtors were killed in the Squid Games and Mr. Kim told him that he was doing it for the money, adding that if Gi-hun hadn't paid his debt and hired him for the job, he wouldn't be able to pay his men or keep the business running. Mr. Kim told his men that if they found the Recruiter, Gi-hun would pay them ₩1,000,000,000 and said that whoever found the guy would get ₩500,000,000, the men got excited to hear that and went home to sleep immediately.
On the morning of June 20, 2024, Mr. Choi and Mr. Kim told all the people they had that they had to find the Recruiter, Woo-seok showed them a mannequin of the guy and told them that the guy was carrying a briefcase in hand, which had stocks of money and Ddakji to play with people on the subway stations and afterwards playing, the guy gave people a card with a phone number. Woo-seok told the men that if they managed to find the Recruiter, they should call the number they were given and take a photo of the mannequin. Mr. Kim distributed his men along the subway lines and told them to check each station. The loan sharks took Ddakji's cards and went to the subway lines. The loan sharks scoured all the subway lines for months and took photos as evidence, but they couldn't find the Recruiter during that time.
Woo-seok begs the Recruiter for his life as he loads more bullets into the gun.
On September 1, 2024, Mr. Choi and Mr. Kim were searching in Jonggak Station and stopped to eat, Woo-seok questioned what they were doing since they hadn't found the Recruiter in 2 years, Mr. Kim understood his doubts, but assured Gi-hun not to waste his fortune looking for someone who doesn't exist. Woo-seok said that his wife told him that if he found the guy, then he would play in the Squid Games to win the Prize money and that if someone played Ddakji on the subway, they would have found him already. But then they heard the noise that Ddakji makes and saw the Recruiter playing against Lee Myung-gi on the other platform, Mr. Choi and Mr. Kim got surprised to see the guy that they had been looking for for so long and informed Gi-hun, Mr. Kim gave Gi-hun the address and the guy started to leave, so Gi-hun told him to follow him that they should until he arrived.
Woo-seok and Mr. Kim hearing the Ddakji slam.
Woo-seok and Mr. Kim followed the recruiter around Seoul while keeping Gi-hun informed of the guy's location. The Recruiter bought 100 breads and 100 lottery tickets and went to Tapgol Park, where there were many homeless people, Mr. Kim gave Gi-hun the location and Gi-hun told him not to approach the guy and to wait for him to arrive. The Recruiter played a game with the homeless people, offering them a choice between a bread and a lottery ticket. Most of the homeless people chose the lottery ticket and lost, at the end, the Recruiter stomped on the lottery tickets like a twisted and heartless guy and said that the homeless people were spoiled, showing his sadistic nature.
Woo-seok and Mr. Kim watching the Recruiter stomp on all the bread rolls.
Gi-hun got delayed because the police had given him a speeding ticket and the Recruiter had gotten into a taxi, so Woo-seok and Mr. Kim followed him. When they reached an alley, Mr. Kim said that they had to catch the Recruiter themselves or he would escape, Woo-seok had his doubts since the guy gave him a bad feeling and they had to wait for Gi-hun, to which Mr. Kim told him that if they lost the guy, they could lose the ₩1,000,000,000. Mr. Choi and Mr. Kim go after the Recruiter and confront him, but despite the fact that they're 2 against 1 and Mr. Choi has a knife, the guy easily defeats them and kidnaps them.
In a black room, the Recruiter bound and gagged Mr. Choi and Mr. Kim and made them them play Rock Paper Scissors, Minus One combined with Russian Roulette. The Recruiter put on opera music, explained the rules of the game to Mr. Choi and Mr. Kim, and told them that his 6-chamber revolver had 1 bullet and would shoot the loser in the head (with a 1/6 odd of dying and a 5/6 odd of surviving). The game started and Mr. Choi didn't put his hands for the fear, so the Recruiter told him that he broke the rules and shot him, but fortunately the chamber was empty and Mr. Choi survived. The game continued and both Mr. Choi and Mr. Kim managed to survive, but the Recruiter quickly got bored and put 4 more bullets in the revolver, to the horror of Mr. Choi and Mr. Kim. The Recruiter sped up the game and Mr. Choi and Mr. Kim tied several times, but in the last round, Mr. Choi put 2 rocks by accident and Mr. Kim put the paper and scissors, so Mr. Choi resigned himself to die, but Mr. Kim sacrificed himself for Mr. Choi and left both hands, so the Recruiter told him that he broke the rules and shot him, killing him. Mr. Choi was horrified and devastated by Mr. Kim's death, the Recruiter congratulated him on winning and told him that he needed to talk to him. The Recruiter made Mr. Choi tell him the location of Gi-hun's base, the Pink Motel, where Gi-hun and the Recruiter played Russian Roulette that night and Gi-hun won, so the imbecile of the Recruiter got forced to shoot himself, being a fitting and ironic end for that psychopathic, repulsive and unpleasant guy.
Woo-seok cries as Mr. Kim accepts his fate.
Halloween Party[]
"Holy hell. You really did win. The game was real, you aren't full of shit."
-Choi Woo-seok to Seong Gi-hun who shows him and Hwang Jun-ho his leftover money
Hwang Jun-ho (a Korean police detective) arrived at the Pink Motel to look for Gi-hun, Jun-ho was watching the motel from his car when he heard the gunshot and went inside, Jun-ho saw that the elevator was on the 4th floor and ran up the stairs at full speed. Upon reaching the 4th floor, Jun-ho began checking the rooms and came to a locked room where a noise was heard, Jun-ho used a fire extinguisher to break the lock and found Woo-seok, who was in his underwear and tied to the bed with a blindfold and a gag, Jun-ho removed Woo-seok's blindfold and gag and pointed his gun at him, Woo-seok begged him not to kill him and Jun-ho asked him where Gi-hun was, to which Woo-seok told him that he was in room 410. Jun-ho found Gi-hun along with the Recruiter's corpse and proceeded to arrest him on suspicion of murder, but then Woo-seok hit Jun-ho in the head with the fire extinguisher, leaving Detective Hwang unconscious. Gi-hun grabbed his gun and asked Woo-seok who he was, to which Woo-seok told him his name, that he was helping Mr. Kim to find the imbecile of the Recruiter, and that Mr. Kim told him a lot of good things about him. Then Mr. Choi saw the Recruiter's corpse and asked Mr. Seong if he killed that guy, Mr. Choi started insulting the imbecile of the Recruiter and told Seong that the Recruiter killed Mr. Kim while lamenting that his boss had died to save him.
Woo-seok put on a Pink Motel bathrobe and cleaned up the Recruiter's disgusting blood on the wall while Gi-hun interrogated Jun-ho, who had already regained consciousness and was handcuffed to the bathtub. Gi-hun recognized Jun-ho as the detective who came to his house when he tried to report the Squid Games and Jun-ho told him that he infiltrated The Island as a Pink Guard to find his brother, Hwang In-ho. Jun-ho told Gi-hun what he discovered about the games, including that the one in charge was the Front Man (but he kept it a secret that he discovered that the Front Man was In-ho) and told him that he could help, to which Woo-seok told Gi-hun not to involve Jun-ho and that he never saw the cops helping people like them. Gi-hun apologized to Jun-ho about his brother, and told him to forget about what happened in the motel just then. But Jun-ho reminds him about all the other players that were killed when Gi-hun was on the Island, and he saw that he didn't kill anyone. He insisted that he can help him.
Gi-hun accepts Jun-ho's help and they go together with Woo-seok to a room, Woo-seok tries to make Gi-hun reconsider accepting Jun-ho's help and tells him about his bad experience with the cops. Upon arriving at the room, Gi-hun showed Woo-seok and Jun-ho his leftover Prize money from the 33rd Squid Game, and Woo-seok got surprised to see the money, Gi-hun told them that all the money had the blood of the people who died in the games on it and that he would use it to finish off the masked guards, he also offered them whatever they wanted if they helped him. Jun-ho said that he wouldn't do it for money and Woo-seok said that he wouldn't either, that the jerk of the Recruiter killed his boss in front of him, who officiated his wedding, so he promised to help take down those masked fools. But Jun-ho reminded the guards on the Island are well-armed, and a few pistols aren't going to be enough to take all of them out.
Gi-hun takes Woo-seok and Jun-ho to the bathroom and shows them the weapons that he has acquired. Woo-seok gets surprised to see that the entire bathroom is filled with weapons and that Seong already had a plan. Gi-hun tells Woo-seok to find people to help them, which Woo-seok says he knows some men who are good at that stuff and notices there are K2s among the weapons, mentioning that he hasn't seen one since he was in the military. Jun-ho thinks that the weapons might be from the black market and asks if they even work, Gi-hun leads them through a tunnel in the wall to an improvised shooting range and shoots at drawings of a circle, a triangle and a square, making Woo-seok get scared and scream at the noise. Gi-hun tells Jun-ho to come practice whenever he can and suggests he quit his job as a police officer.
Gi-hun hired a dentist to pull out one of his teeth and replace it with a tooth equipped with a tracking to locate him, Woo-seok paid the dentist and indicated to him not to say anything about what they did. By October 30, 2024, Woo-seok had recruited a team of Mercenaries composed of several highly skilled men. Woo-seok (wearing noise-canceling headphones) watched the men practicing at the shooting range and introduced the team to Mr. Seong, telling him that there were men who had been in the Marine Corps, UDT and the ROK Special Forces, adding that Jun-ho was a former police officer. Woo-seok told Gi-hun that the mercenaries would do as he said as long as the pay was good, took off his headphones and introduced him to Kim, the leader of the team, who was a seasoned veteran who saw a lot of combat overseas. Woo-seok is confident that everything will go well since Gi-hun and Woo-seok will enter the club alone while the team is nearby, and Gi-hun has a tracker, so they can follow him. The team continues practicing and Woo-seok complains that they didn't tell him to put on his headphones.
On October 31, 2024, Woo-seok waits with Gi-hun and Jun-ho in front of Club HDH for midnight. Woo-seok gets surprised to see people in costumes and realizes it's Halloween, which gives him a bad feeling. Gi-hun asks Jun-ho if the Front Man was wearing a hood and a black mask, to which Jun-ho says yes and Woo-seok realizes that the Front Man chose Halloween so he could be in public with his mask. Gi-hun sees that it's almost midnight and he and Woo-seok proceed to enter the club. Woo-seok decides to put something over his face and buys a green horse mask. Upon entering the club, Woo-seok contacts Jun-ho to check that everything is alright, telling him that everything is crazy in the club and that everyone is wearing masks, adding that he will let him know if anything happens.
Woo-seok and Gi-hun started searching the club and then Jun-ho saw the Pink Guards (a Manager and a Soldier) arrive, so Jun-ho informed Woo-seok and Gi-hun that the masked men in pink jumpsuits had arrived and Woo-seok started searching. Mr. Seong encountered with the Manager and followed him outside the club, Mr. Choi saw that, informed Detective Hwang and began to follow them. Detective Hwang informed him that there was more than 1 guard and Mr. Choi encountered with the Soldier, who electrocuted him, rendering him unconscious. Jun-ho entered the club and found Mr. Choi unconscious in the bar.
After failing to corner he Front Man, Woo-seok gets on the boat with Hwang to track Gi-hun's location as the next part of the plan. But as they arrived on a different island, they found the tracker that was extracted from Gi-hun's tooth, and placed on a fisherman's bait. The team split up in two different boats. He paired with Hwang, Captain Park, Mercenary Kim and several comrades. During one of the investigation the team discovered a trap door and it set off killing one and wounding another. Back at the ship, Choi believes that trap shows that the Squid game organization knows about their whereabouts. Despite losing one of their men, Choi and the rest of the team were committed to find the island.
One stormy night he woke up and heard some commotion outside. He noticed that Captain Park was awake (having just killed the Drone pilot) and began to question him. Captain Park managed to convince Woo-seok that what he heard was just crates sliding about the deck. Woo-seok went to go back to bed, but before he did he noticed that Park was holding what seemed to be a screwdriver in his hand. This tipped him off that Captain Park may have been secretly sabotaging the team.
Once the team arrived at the docks Woo-seok met with Jun-ho in his room to express his concerns about Captain Park. Jun-ho's trust of the captain was too much for him to believe Woo-seok, instead pointing to Woo-seok's drinking as being the problem. Woo-seok still wasn't satisfied though, so he left the group to go and conduct his own investigation of the captain, meeting up with a former colleague, Kim Mu-dong, from when he was a loan shark to do so. Woo-seok droped the heavy news to the co-worker that Kim had died. When his co-worker started asking questions, Woo-seok struggled to explain due to the past trauma. Later that night, Woo-seok broke into Captain Park's house. He found the house to be in shambles, evidently having not been lived in for a while, with only Park's dog inhabiting it. Woo-seok searched through the house and while he did not find any solid evidence that Park was collaborating with the games, he did find a photo of Captain Park going fishing with The Recruiter. As he was about to turn and leave the dog, having broken free of its leash, appeared and began to attack Woo-seok. Woo-seok was just about able to get his gun out and kill the dog. The noise however tipped off one of Park's neighbours who called the police. Woo-seok started making his way out of the house, but as he was doing so he noticed something partially covered up by the dog crate. Upon closer inspection he found it was a bin buried into the ground, and inside of it he found all of the money that Park had made from working at the games, alongside his Manager uniform. Just as he was about to escape with the evidence the police burst into the house and arrested Woo-seok.
Once Woo-seok arrived at the police station the officers began questioning him on why he had broken into Park's house, and Woo-seok began frantically explaining the Games and what Park's involvement in it was, but of course the investigator didn't buy into it. The investigator then decided to check his criminal record which had 9 total charges on it; his charges being kidnapping, false imprisonment, assault, threats and extortion. All this compared to Captain Park's almost spotless record further convinced them that Woo-seok was lying. The investigator decided to call Park to inform him of what had happened to his house, with Woo-seok now realising that Park would know he'd been exposed and was likely to take out those on the boat. Woo-seok begged for his phone back to call his lawyer, but when the police gave in and tried to get him to use facial recognition to open it, he snatched the phone and ran away. Woo-seok took the opportunity to call and warn Jun-ho about what he found out about the captain. His actions saved both Jun-ho and Leader Kim, however it was a bit too late as after being called by the police, Captain Park had already wiped most of the boat crew members out. For his attempted escape he was properly arrested and given six months in jail.
Woo-seok's ID photo
Six months later, Jun-ho picked up Woo-seok from prison. With the Games (atleast in Korea) now destroyed, Woo-seok was without work, and he didn't have the money nor will to return to being a loan shark. Instead he used what money he had to purchase the Pink Motel and renovate it alongside Mu-dong as manager, turning into a Las Vegas style business.
Personality[]
Before his boss's death, Woo-seok was a standard loan shark who was only there for the money. However he demonstrates loyalty for his boss as he expresses his concerns that he has of their mission. He sticks by and helps Kim Jeong-rae. Following Mr. Kim's death, his main objective is to avenge his boss. While he seems scared, he has signs of bravery for joining Gi-hun on ending the games. He does not like loud noises as he is seen covering his ears during gun training. His past experience was demonstrated as he was the first one to suspect Captain Park. He is not afraid to follow through his instincts as he decides to go investigate on his own despite his team brushing off his concerns.
Kill Count[]
| Episode | Character | Image/GIF | Information |
|---|---|---|---|
| It's Not Your Fault | Park Yeong-gil's Dog | 
|
Shot in the head with revolver; self-defense (Off-Screen) |
Behind the scenes[]
Choi Woo-seok is portrayed by Jeon Seok-ho, who has a history of portraying comic relief characters. He was voiced in the English dub by James Tang.
Appearances[]
- Season Two
- "Bread and Lottery"
- "Halloween Party"
- "001"
- "Six Legs"
- "One More Game"
- "O X"
- "Friend or Foe"
- Season Three
Trivia[]
- Woo-seok is the responsible for Gi-hun's mission to end the Squid Games being successful. Since Mr. Choi suspected Captain Park and his suspicions led him to discover that Park was a traitor, which led Jun-ho and Kim to the island.
- His name is nearly identical to that of the winner of the 6th Squid Game, as well Player 006 in 33rd Squid Game.
- Woo-seok's 43rd birthday and the Sky Squid Game take place on the same day: November 7, 2024.
Gallery[]
Promotional[]
