Squid Game season two introduced us to many new characters, including one pretty insufferable rapper by the name of Thanos, player 230. What you might not know is that Choi Seunghyun is a real rapper who was a big hit in the 2000s and 2010s.

Even if his name, Choi Seunghyun, doesn’t ring a bell to K-pop fans, they would definitely know him from BIGBANG, a boyband where he went by the stage name T.O.P.

Who is Choi Seunghyun, or T.O.P.?

via Netflix

Choi began his music career as an underground rapper, but eventually joined the huge Korean label YG Entertainment (the same one as BLACKPINK) and joined BIGBANG in 2006. The group made chart-toppers together for over a decade, and Choi released successful solo singles like the Top two Korean hit “Turn It Up” in 2010, plus “Doom Dada,” which hit number four in 2013 and entered Billboard’s U.S.-based World Digital Songs chart at number three.

In BIGBANG, T.O.P wrote a lot of the group’s lyrics and music, even co-writing the group’s 2022 single “Still Life,” which ended up being his last one with them.

In early 2022, YG Entertainment shared that T.O.P. ended his contract with the label and left the music industry without a trace. A year later, in May 2023, T.O.P. explained that he wanted to focus his career on other things like acting, as well as art collecting and even a potential spaceflight aboard the SpaceX Starship (which ended up being cancelled). He still has over 17 million followers on Instagram.

He faced some serious controversy in 2017

In 2017, the former Choi Seunghyun was sentenced to 10 months in prison and suspended for two years for marijuana use. This meant he was also discharged from his military service and remained noticeably absent on his social media platforms, cutting him off from the rest of the entertainment industry.

While he’s had his controversy, Choi was cast as Thanos, or player 230, in Squid Game. Choi has been excluded from most of the Squid Game season two promotion despite being a huge character in the series.