This article includes spoilers for the two seasons of “Squid Game.”balato8

Four years ago, the actor Wi Ha-jun was feeling desperate. At the time, Wi, now 33, was struggling to land a breakout role and yearning for a change.

But one day he heard about “Squid Game,” a dystopian drama in which hopeless people compete for survival by playing Korean children’s games, the games Wi had enjoyed as a child: Red Light, Green Light; Dalgona; tug of war.

After chatting with the creator and director, Hwang Dong-hyuk, Wi decided to try out for a role. On the day of his audition, he had a rash on his face and wore a hat to try to conceal it. He got the part anyway.

“I’m the type of guy who would be over the moon for the first five seconds and then after that I start worrying,” Wi said through a translator from his home in Seoul. “I was quite worried about how I would pull off this role and how I should portray this guy.”

The W.H.O. had come under increasing criticism for declaring a global public health emergency for mpox last month without giving a vaccine that prequalification stamp of approval, or a more provisional form of approval called emergency use authorization. Bavarian Nordic first submitted its safety and effectiveness data on the vaccine, called Jynneos, to the W.H.O. in 2023. The W.H.O. had defended its slow pace of review, saying that it needed to subject the vaccine to careful study because it, and two others that have been used to protect against mpox, were originally designed as smallpox immunizations, and because delivering it in low-resource settings such as Central Africa would involve factors different from those relating to its use in high-income countries.

Worried, Mr. Lee checked the news and saw there had been a shooting in Brooklyn, on the subway line Mr. Delpeche took to his job at Woodhull Hospital. As videos of the scene poured in on social media, Mr. Lee recognized his friend of decades lying on the ground, wounded.

Fans of “Squid Game,” which returned for a second season on Thursday, know Wi as Jun-ho, the silent, daring police detective with a chiseled jawline. As he infiltrates the games in search of his brother, he uncovers shocking details about an organ harvesting operation and even more surprising information about the identity of his brother, In-ho (Lee Byung-hun), who turns out to be a criminal mastermind behind the operation. A climactic face-off between the two brothers ends with Jun-ho being shot in the shoulder and lurching off a cliff.

As “Squid Game” became an international phenomenon, so did Wi. He earned brand sponsorships, received casting invitations for other shows and built up millions of followers on Instagram.

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