All of Us Are Dead season 2 is confirmed: Squid Game stars join the cast, and Cheong-san is somehow alive
The last time viewers saw Lee Cheong-san, he was half-turned, falling down an elevator shaft into a military firebomb. On October 24, he walked onto a stage in Seoul and said hi.
Netflix Korea brought the All of Us Are Dead cast to its 10th anniversary festival in Seoul on October 24, 2026, and the "What Next?" showcase finally settled season 1's biggest open question. Yoon Chan-young, who plays Cheong-san, stood next to Park Ji-hu, Cho Yi-hyun and Lomon and confirmed the character survived, per What's on Netflix's translation of the livestream.
Season 2 finished filming in February. Netflix still showed no footage and gave no date, just "coming soon."
"You may have thought I was dead, but I, Cheong-san, am still alive."
— Yoon Chan-young, at Netflix Korea's 10th anniversary showcase
Strictly speaking, the reveal was 15 months old. When Netflix announced the season 2 cast on July 23, 2025, Yoon was listed among the four returning leads. The press release just didn't say in what condition he'd be coming back.
How Cheong-san "died"
The season 1 finale, which hit Netflix on January 28, 2022, gave him about as thorough a send-off as a K-drama lead can get. Netflix's own explainer lays out the sequence:
- The bite: Gwi-nam, the bully turned half-zombie, sinks his teeth into Cheong-san when he catches up with the surviving students.
- The goodbye: Cheong-san knows he's turning. He says goodbye to On-jo, the two finally kiss, and he stays behind to lure the zombies away.
- The fall: He and Gwi-nam fight one last time and go down an elevator shaft together just as the military's bomb hits Hyosan High.
Bitten, cornered and firebombed, the character had three separate ways to die in the space of one episode. The finale did leave one door open. Nam-ra, the class president, survived the same blast as a "halfbie," a human who keeps her mind while carrying the virus, and she ends the season jumping off the school roof to go find others like her.
In 2022, director Lee Jae-kyu said the team already had a plan for season 2 and wasn't ready to share it. He did drop one hint.
"If season 1 was about humans surviving, season 2 will be about zombies surviving."
— Lee Jae-kyu, director, February 2022, via What's on Netflix
Read that next to Nam-ra's ending, and the halfbie route is the only explanation the show has set up. Nobody at Netflix has confirmed it. But a series that spends its finale proving you can survive a bite with your brain intact didn't put Cheong-san's name back on the call sheet to explain him away with a lucky ventilation shaft.
The Squid Game recruits
Netflix filled out the new cast from its own bench. Two of the four newcomers come straight out of Squid Game:
- Kim Si-eun: She played Kim Young-mi, Player 095, the timid contestant who stuck close to Hyun-ju. In season 2 she plays So Ju-ran, an outgoing college student.
- Roh Jae-won: He played Nam-gyu, Player 124, Thanos's volatile sidekick. Here he's Han Du-seok, an NIS team leader, which is a promotion by any standard.
- Lee Min-jae: From Netflix's Weak Hero Class 2, he plays Yong Ma-ru, On-jo's senior at university.
- Yoon Ga-yi: Known for SNL Korea and Undercover High School, she plays Lee Jong-a.
Roh's casting is the funniest move on the list. The man who spent two Squid Game seasons as Thanos's most volatile follower now plays the government official whose job is to contain the chaos.
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The story moves out of high school with them. Netflix's logline says a new zombie virus engulfs Seoul just as the crisis seems over. On stage, Park described the friends as college students and adults now, Cho said Nam-ra is still a half-zombie living in Hyosan, and Lomon announced that Su-hyeok has returned "as a wonderful adult." Director Lee Jae-kyu and writer Chun Sung-il are both back.
The five-year wait
Netflix renewed the show in June 2022, on day one of Geeked Week, and season 1 now sits at 55.5 million views on the streamer's 91-day count. Then the schedule slipped. Filming was expected in 2024, moved to 2025 for what Star News called "a better production environment," and finally ran from July 2025 to February 2026.
Season 2 wasn't on Netflix's 2026 Korean slate, so the earliest realistic window is next year. What's on Netflix's own estimate is January or February 2027. That's not an announcement, but if it holds, the gap between seasons will come in around five years. Squid Game needed three years and three months between its first and second seasons, and that was considered a long wait.
Netflix kept Cheong-san's survival quiet for three and a half years, then put his name in a 2025 press release and a "still alive" on a 2026 stage. The one thing it still hasn't shown is his face.
Season 1 sold itself on the promise in its title. Season 2 is being sold on the one student it couldn't kill.
Previously we wrote: Mike Flanagan's Carrie is getting a season 2, and Stephen King never wrote what happens next