“The Squid Game macrocosm has quite recently started.”

Those are the words of Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos, who confirmed during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call on Thursday that a second season of the surprise smash-hit Korean drama will “absolutely” be produced.

Since the dystopian drama became Netflix’s most-watched series ever, creator Hwang Dong-hyuk has talked about making a second season, and has even teased a third season. Sarandos’ comments today, however, are the first time any of the streamer’s senior executives have confirmed the renewal.

Hwang created, wrote, directed, and executive produced the nine-part series, which has been viewed by over 142 million Netflix subscribers and streamed for over 1.6 billion hours.

The series tells the story of a mysterious invitation that leads to 456 participants, all of whom are in desperate financial situations, being locked in a secret location and forced to play a series of traditional Korean children’s games – such as Red Light, Green Light, and tug of war – in order to win 45.6 billion won ($38 million). However, if they do not win, they will perish.

It comes just a week after Netflix announced that it would be launching 25 shows from South Korea this year. Sarandos acknowledged that Parasite’s Oscar success was a “watershed moment” for Korean drama.

He congratulated the streamer’s local team on Squid Game’s success.

“They didn’t try to make the show different so that it would travel,” he said, “but they tried to find all the things about Korean cinema and Korean drama and build them up in a way and new levels of production values.” “It’s not like we had to go into Korea and teach everyone how to make great content.” It’s a fantastic market for that. There has always been interest around the world, and the [K Drama] market has always had pockets of success all over the place, but the ease of delivery that we’ve provided has pushed that into the mainstream.”