SaeByeong

"You can do it. Don't die in here, okay? And go... and go meet your mother. Go get your brother too. And go to Jeju Island. [...] Kang Sae-byeok! ...Thanks, for playing with me."

- Ji-yeong's final words to Sae-byeok in "Gganbu"

SaeByeong is the femslash ship between Kang Sae-byeok and Ji-yeong from the Squid Game fandom.

Canon
Sae-byeok and Ji-yeong meet each other at a remote island while they're both participating in a mysterious survival game. Prior to the third game, contestants are told to form teams of ten players. Sang-woo, one of the unofficial leaders of the group, proposes they each bring in one man to improve their odds, saying that men tend to excel women at most games. With this, Sae-byeok starts looking for a teammate and spots Ji-yeong sitting by herself at the stairs. Seeing like-minded solitude and distrust in her, Sae-byeok ignores Sang-woo's instructions and invites Ji-yeong to join their team.

The game is revealed to be a Tug-of-War, where the losing teams will plunge to their deaths. Their team ends up winning, and when they come back from the big tower, Ji-yeong asks for Sae-byeok's name since up until then, they haven't even exchanged them. When Sae-byeok asks her why she wants to know, Ji-yeong replies that it's because she wants to call her by her name. Since Sae-byeok refuses to tell her, Ji-yeong says that Sae-byeok seems to be really secretive. Then, Sae-byeok asks Ji-yeong to leave her alone, to which she replies that it was Sae-byeok who approached her first.

The fourth game requires teams of two. This causes a fair amount of discord since nobody wants to team up with a woman or anyone they perceive to be weak. Since no one in her team seemed interested to play with her, Sae-byeok left to search for a partner. As she is looking around, this time Ji-yeong approaches Sae-byeok and asks her to team up with her. Although Sae-byeok is reluctant at first, she accepts Ji-yeong's offer since the latter assures that she will win if they play together and she will do whatever it takes to grant Sae-byeok's victory, and so the two of them form a team. However, soon a twist is revealed: the partners have to play against each other, and the first one to gain all of their opponent's marbles within thirty minutes in the game wins. This turns up being a major problem as the loser of the game will consequently be killed.

With the timer ticking down, Sae-byeok and Ji-yeong sit down to mull over what game to play. Neither of them are in any particular hurry to do so, due to the life or death stakes of the game, and also because both are hit hard with revelation that they have to compete against each other. Since the players are free to create the rules of the game, Ji-yeong suggests that she and Sae-byeok will play betting everything in a single round during the last minutes instead of spending the entire time doing it and in the meantime, they should talk about things they never told anyone, since one of them will die anyway, so they can tell each other anything with no need be embarrassed of it later, and Sae-byeok agrees.

They start revealing their past to each other, with Sae-byeok telling Ji-yeong how her family tried to move from the North Korea to the South Korea for a better life. However, her father was shot while trying to swim across the border and her mother was caught by public security officers in China, then sent back. She also tells Ji-yeong that a plague in her village had killed her grandfather, grandmother, and older brother, and so she and her younger brother were the only ones who successfully crossed the border to the South Korea. Ji-yeong, in turn, reveals that she and her mother were abused by her father, who was a pastor and would pray for forgiveness every time he abused them. One day when coming home from school, she found her mother dead by her father's hands, whom she later killed in an act of revenge. She had received the Squid Game card the same day she was released from prison. So she came to the games, with nowhere else to go. She asks what Sae-byeok will do with the cash prize if she wins. Sae-byeok replies that she’ll buy a house to live with her brother and then bring her mother from the North. Ji-yeong points out that there has to be something else she wants to do since that won't take all the money, to which Sae-byeok replies that she wishes to visit Jeju Island. Ji-yeong accepts that but still teases Sae-byeok that she needs to dream bigger like going to Hawaii. Ji-yeong admits that she hasn’t thought what she would do with the money if she made it out. She asks Sae-byeok if they should go to Jeju together only to remember that they won't be able to leave together.

With the timer closing in on zero, they decide to determine the winner and loser of their game by seeing who can throw one marble closest to the wall in front of them. Before doing so, Sae-byeok finally reveals her name to Ji-yeong, as the latter does the same, with Sae-byeok noticing that Ji-yeong has no family name. Sae-byeok throws her marble close to the wall, but Ji-yeong drops hers marble at her feet on purpose, deciding to sacrifice herself so Sae-byeok could win the game. When Sae-byeok instantly advances on her, irate with her decision, Ji-yeong reveals that she has no reason to win since she has nothing left in life to come back to, whereas Sae-byeok still has her family. Ji-yeong asks Sae-byeok to make sure to leave the games alive, reunite with her family, and to go to Jeju Island. With the game over, Sae-byeok wins and heads for the exit, she stops as Ji-yeong calls her. Ji-yeong smiles and thanks Sae-byeok for playing with her. A guard shoots Ji-yeong in the head, eliminating her from the game as Sae-byeok cries silently.

Afterwards, Sae-byeok is seen deeply affected by Ji-yeong's sacrifice. Upon returning to the bedroom, Sae-byeok still mourns her friend's death as she is seen visibly dejected, barely eating the lunch handed to her.

As a result of Ji-yeong's act of kindness, Sae-byeok stops being so paranoid about the other players and begins trusting others as demonstrated when she starts to look out for Gi-hun, who was kind and helped protect her in the games. In her dying moments, she trusts him to take care of her little brother.

Fanon
SaeByeong is the most popular ship within the fandom. Not least due to the show's lack of "official" romance and the seemingly incredible chemistry between the two. Many fans online made the ship even more famous by doing edits, TikToks or other fan content, where people expressed their support for the ship and discussed possible homoerotic connotations in their relationship. One of the most iconic scenes that most fans remember of this ship is when Ji-yeong sacrifices herself so Sae-byeok can survive. The ship has became so famous, in fact, that it already has, of currently, 500+ works in AO3 while SangHun being the second, despite the fact the series started airing recently.

Quotes
"You've got a reason to get out of this place. And I don't. I thought hard about what I'd do. If I were the one who got out since you asked me earlier. No matter how hard I thought, though, I got nothing. The one who should have a reason to get back out there... that's what's right."

- Ji-yeong telling Sae-byeok she has no reason for leaving in "Gganbu"

"You can do it. Don't die in here, okay? And go... and go meet your mother. Go get your brother too. And go to Jeju Island. [...] Kang Sae-byeok! ...Thanks, for playing with me."

- Ji-yeong's final words to Sae-byeok in "Gganbu"

Fandom
FAN FICTION



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Trivia

 * Sae-byeok and Ji-yeong's actresses, Ho Yeon Jung and Lee Yoo-mi, are good friends. In an interview Yoo-mi said: "We're the same age and we share similar interests, so we got along really well. When we were filming, we kept sharing Ji-yeong and Sae-byeok's feelings. There was no way we wouldn't grow close. So I guess we were meant to be?"
 * Ho Yeon says that Yoo-mi was always very considerate when she talked about her concerns in acting. "Since I trust her, we talked about many things. So I think it all wrapped up nicely. I'm still thankful for her." - Ho Yeon said.
 * Ho Yeon And Yoo-mi couldn't stop crying while filming the scene of Ji-yeong's sacrifice for Sae-byeok. As soon as the directors called “Cut,” both actresses let out their tears. Ho-yeon even walked away in order to compose herself again. The makeup artists had to take time in between takes to wipe away the tears off Ho-yeon’s face. Once the scene was succesfully filmed, Ho Yeon couldn’t do anything but rest her forehead on Yoo-mi's shoulder while crying.
 * When Ho Yeon was asked who her favorite character was in Squid Game, she replied "Ji-yeong, of course!".
 * Yoo-mi said in an interview that she wanted Sae-byeok to live.
 * The director of the show, Hwang Dong-hyuk, during a commentary with Lee Jung-jae, Park Hae-soo, and art director Chae Kyoung-sun said "They're complete strangers but there's some kind of friendship between them. A bond formed in a short period of time. Empathy and understanding of each other. I thought they would be the perfect example to portray such feelings." about Sae-byeok and Ji-yeong