Squid Game and Oh My Ghost Clients: The weight Kang Ae-shim's women carry

What do Squid Game and Oh My Ghost Clients have in common? Well, a lot, actually. Both series expose systemic failures—brutal, mundane, and bureaucratic. And at the center of each, there is a woman who mirrors it all. That woman is Kang Ae-shim.

Oh My Ghost Clients episode 5 begins quietly. A woman studies alone, late into the night. Her goal isn't advancement, but survival. Not ambition, but the bare minimum to remain employed. Her collapse happens far from the spotlight, at home, in the quiet, surrounded by notebooks and exhaustion.

Yeong-suk’s ghost lingers between university walls and tasks never finished. She’s played by Kang Ae-shim, the same actress who gave life to Geum-ja in Squid Game, a mother who walks into a death game so her son might have a future.

Different stories, different deaths, but the same woman bearing the same unbearable weight. These are part of a pattern Oh My Ghost Clients exposes with tender fury. Women who give everything to systems that never intended to hold them.

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Terms that turn lives into numbers

In Korean, the term gwajeongsa (과정사) has been used to describe death by overwork, especially in cases tied to bureaucratic pressure. A more widely used term is gwallohaesa (과로사), which translates to “death from excessive labor.” It appears frequently in media and medical reports, tied to high-profile lawsuits and public protests.

Though it sounds like a rare tragedy, it is not. It is part of a national pattern, one that especially affects older workers, temporary staff, and women in cleaning and custodial roles who are pushed to meet standards without the resources to survive them.

In Oh My Ghost Clients, Yeong-suk is one of them. Her job did not include administrative duties. She was given no training, no extra pay, no protection. But she was expected to pass an absurd test or face demotion. She died while trying to meet that demand.

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Yeong-suk: the custodian who carried the weight of a system

Kang Ae-shim gives Yeong-suk a dignity that doesn’t beg for sympathy. It demands recognition. Yeong-suk worked as a university custodian, cleaning floors and emptying bins while preparing for an exam that had nothing to do with her duties. She studied late at night, isolated and afraid. She didn’t die at work. She died from work at home during one of those nights of desperate study.

Her friend and co-worker, who happens to be Mu-jin’s mother, finds her body. What follows is an investigation not just into a cause of death, but into a culture of sanctioned neglect.

The university had imposed unjust requirements. The public humiliation broke her health. Her ghost walks not for revenge, but as a testament. Through Kang Ae-shim’s stillness, each movement feels ancient, as if the story carries every woman who’s ever cleaned in silence.

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Same system, different ghosts: Squid Game & Oh My Ghost Clients

In Squid Game, Jang Geum-ja is pushed into a game designed to kill her. She enters it to help her son. In Oh My Ghost Clients, Yeong-suk is crushed by a test designed to erase her. She tries to pass it to keep her job. Both women act out of duty, out of love, and out of necessity. And both are punished for it.

Kang Ae-shim threads these characters together without melodrama. Her eyes hold exhaustion deeper than lines can convey. The scripts don’t connect these women, but her performance does. Through her, they belong to the same story. A story where survival always costs more when you're a mother, when you're aging, when you're invisible.

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Kang Ae-shim builds a legacy through presence

Across decades of television and cinema, Kang Ae-shim has played grandmothers, mourners, cleaners, and teachers. Roles that often go unnoticed. She brings to each a presence so grounded it becomes undeniable.

In Squid Game, she gave Geum-ja a heart that screamed. In Oh My Ghost Clients, she makes Yeong-suk unforgettable through breath, through restraint, and through gravity.

These are not side characters. They are the spine. The grief they carry holds up entire worlds. Kang Ae-shim's acting does it all. Through her body, we see every suppressed cry. Through her voice, we hear every forgotten name. She doesn’t break silence. She makes it sacred.

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A woman shaped by two worlds

What connects Geum-ja and Yeong-suk isn’t only poverty or grief. It’s the way both enter systems that were never built for them. And the way both refuse to go quietly.

Squid Game shows a mother stepping into the jaws of violence. Oh My Ghost Clients shows a worker dying from polite cruelty. Kang Ae-shim gives them the same backbone. Not through repetition, but through emotional architecture. Her face holds centuries. Her posture rewrites every room. She offers no outbursts, no theatrics. Only truth.

Her roles don’t echo each other by accident. They answer each other. Together, they build a portrait of womanhood under pressure, one that television rarely pauses to honor. But she does. She holds it. She doesn’t let go.