‘Teach You a Lesson’ Director Hong Jong-chan and Star Kim Moo-yul on the Netflix Global Hit That Turned a Korean Classroom Into a World Stage: ‘Authenticity Is What Travels Borders’
When Netflix first greenlit a Korean series about a special-forces officer dispatched to intervene in school bullying cases, nobody expected it to end up in the living rooms of 91 countries. But “Teach You a Lesson” — now in its fourth consecutive week atop the platform’s Global Top 10 Non-English Series chart, with 7.3 million views in the week of June 22–28 alone — has done exactly that, racking up appearances in the Top 10 across markets as varied as Argentina, Germany, Japan, Malaysia and Australia.
Educators and parents from countries with no particular cultural overlap with Korea have been writing in to say they recognized their own schools on screen.
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For director Hong Jong-chan, the scale of that response remains genuinely disorienting. “It still doesn’t feel entirely real,” he says.
What Hong set out to make was something more modest in ambition: a story about the moment Korean society could no longer afford to look away from its schools. The systemic failures — teacher authority collapsing, bullying left to fester, institutions designed to resolve conflict instead protecting themselves — were the raw material. The fictional Educational Rights Protection Bureau, or ERPB, a covert squad of inspectors who intervene where official channels won’t, was the vehicle.
“In many ways, fantasy begins where reality becomes unbearable,” Hong says. “That simple idea became the foundation of my directing approach.”
The principle shaped every tonal decision on the show. Hong describes his guiding rule as keeping emotions realistic while making resolutions genre-driven. The pain of victims had to feel completely authentic, he explains, so that audiences would become invested — but when the ERPB moved to act, those sequences were calibrated for exhilaration, almost like an action film. Dark comedy served a parallel function. “Through satire,” he says, the underlying message could land with more sharpness than earnestness alone would allow. “The heavier reality becomes, the more powerful the catharsis of breaking through it with action.”
What Hong was most determined to avoid was the lone-hero structure that the premise could easily have defaulted to. The series builds its weight across an ensemble: Lee Sung-min as Choi Gang-seok, the Education Minister who founded the bureau and defends its purpose while under sustained public pressure; Jin Ki-joo as Im Han-rim, a junior inspector whose surface politeness gives way to something relentless in the field; and Pyo Ji-hoon as Bong Geun-dae, a KAIST-educated administrative officer who begins treating the job as just an assignment before the realities of school life draw him in. “Behind Na Hwa-jin’s overwhelming presence,” Hong says, “Choi Kang-seok quietly shoulders enormous responsibility. Im Han-rim fights alongside him on the front lines, while Bong Geun-dae brings warmth and humanity to the team. Each character stands with victims in their own way.”
Hong is careful to say the ERPB was never meant to be presented as a clean moral model. “The ERPB is a fantasy,” he says. “It’s an organization that would be difficult to imagine existing in reality, and some of its methods could certainly be controversial.” What interested him was the question the bureau’s existence poses rather than any answer it provides: when institutions fail, where does justice come from, and how much are people willing to sacrifice to stand beside victims? “I wanted viewers to wrestle with those questions themselves,” he says. “I believe stories that leave audiences thinking long after the credits roll are ultimately more meaningful than stories that provide all the answers.”
Kim Moo-yul, who plays ERPB inspector Na Hwa-jin, approached the character’s ethical ambiguity with equal care. He resists both the hero and antihero labels. “If a hero is someone who saves victims and delivers justice,” Kim says, “then Hwa-jin is more of a person driven by responsibility – someone who gives others the opportunity and guidance they need to move forward with their lives.” The character, he adds, doesn’t fit the antihero frame either, because he isn’t motivated solely by personal desire. “I’m actually very curious to hear how viewers interpret Na Hwa-jin,” Kim says.
What drew him to the role, he explains, was precisely that the character carries his own unresolved damage. “He’s a victim himself who chooses to reach out and help other victims,” Hong says. “That’s where his true strength comes from.” A flawless hero, Hong argues, would have been far less convincing. “Kim Moo-yul captured that aspect of the character beautifully. Not only did he bring the qualities audiences already associate with him, but he also revealed new dimensions of himself that we hadn’t seen before.”
That interiority required as much preparation as the show’s extensive action sequences. Kim says he spent more time thinking through the scenes with victims than the physical confrontations that would become the series’ most-clipped moments online. “I needed to understand the victims’ circumstances while also conveying Na Hwa-jin’s personality,” he says, “and I worked hard to find the right balance so that he would come across as neither overly emotional nor too cold.” In confrontations with perpetrators, by contrast, the task was conveying decisiveness and overwhelming physical presence. Since the character comes from a special-forces background, Kim adjusted his training and conditioning before filming began so that Na Hwa-jin’s movements would read as light and efficient rather than performatively imposing.
The emotional scenes, he says, were where the series’ central argument had to be won or lost. Hong frames those moments in explicitly moral terms. “Whenever Na Hwa-jin and the inspectors tell victims, ‘We’ll protect you,'” he says, “I wanted those words to feel more than just dialogue. I wanted them to convey the genuine responsibility of adults and the sincere compassion of one human being for another.” Without that foundation, he says, none of the action would feel justified — it would amount to spectacle. “The action isn’t there simply to entertain. It’s an expression of lifting people back up after they’ve been broken by what they’ve endured.”
The show is Hong’s second sustained engagement with institutions that fail young people, following “Juvenile Justice,” his 2022 Netflix series examining the Korean juvenile court system. He sees a throughline between the two works, but locates it somewhere other than the obvious institutional critique. The deeper preoccupation, he says, is communication, or its collapse. “I believe the greatest source of conflict in our society today stems from our inability to communicate with one another,” he adds. Working on “Juvenile Justice,” he came to understand that juvenile crime is never only about the offender — it is always tangled up with families, schools and society as a whole. “Teach You a Lesson” continues that thinking. The difference is tonal: where the earlier series examined systemic complexity through a restrained and balanced lens, the new one pushes deliberately toward catharsis.
The scale of the international response has clarified something for Hong about how specific storytelling travels. The show’s conversations about Korean education — the collapse of respect for teachers, the inadequacy of institutional responses to bullying, the question of what adults owe children — have been picked up and reprocessed by viewers in contexts Hong could not have anticipated. Teachers in other countries have been interpreting the series through the lens of their own classrooms. A line from the show — “It takes an entire village to raise a child” — has circulated well beyond its original context. “The more faithfully we portray the specific realities of Korean society,” Hong says, “the more universal the story becomes. The more specific and authentic a story is, the more people are able to see themselves in it.”
He draws a pointed conclusion from that: neither diluting a story for international audiences nor overemphasizing its Korean-ness produces genuine cross-border resonance. “Authenticity is what ultimately travels across borders,” he says. It is a position that cuts against the more calculating approaches to global content — the impulse to sand down local particularity in search of a universal average – and Hong credits the show’s refusal of that impulse as central to its success.
Kim had worried about exactly this problem during production. “Because the series is set within Korea’s education system,” he says, “I worried that global viewers might find it difficult to relate to or feel some distance from the story.” The fact that so many did not is what has surprised him most about the show’s reception. “I hope that, with all the love it has received,” he says, “this series will remain in viewers’ hearts and memories for a long time.”
Beyond the viewing numbers, Hong says, what he had actually hoped for was that “Teach You a Lesson” would generate meaningful social conversations — and watching that happen has been more gratifying than any metric. “It’s also been fascinating and deeply moving,” he says, “to see teachers and parents in other countries interpret the story through the lens of their own societies and experiences.”
Hong says he would welcome the chance to return for a second season. He is also still thinking about schools more broadly — about the stories within them that haven’t been told yet. Whatever comes next, the question he says he returns to at the start of every project remains the same. “What is the story that people most need to hear right now?” he says. “Whatever the genre may be, I believe every story must ultimately be about people.”
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Badenoch blasts 'moaning' female Labour MPs over Burnham jobs 'quota'
Kemi Badenoch has told Labour women to earn a job in Andy Burnham's Cabinet instead of demanding they are handed jobs because of their gender.
The Tory leader lashed out today amid reports that female MPs are demanding the de-facto new prime minister introduce a 50:50 gender split 'quota' in his government.
Amid reports that former foreign secretary David Miliband is being lined up to return to the role, possibly with his brother Ed as Chancellor, one female minister also complained that Burnham could not have 'more Milibands than women' in the top posts.
But in a scathing article in the Times today Mrs Badenoch told them to 'stop moaning' and get chosen on merit instead of retreating into 'more of the failed identity politics that is holding back our country'.
'There are many, many reasons why you shouldn't have any Milibands in the cabinet,' she said.
'But complaining that the boys haven't given them the right jobs or that the boys are taking all the jobs, just shows that Labour's women still don't get it.'
The idea of quotas was also attacked by Baroness Jacqui Smith, Labour's Skills Minister.
Asked by Times Radio if Mr Burnham should reserve jobs for women, she said: 'No, I think what Andy Burnham should be doing is building the very best team around him to change this country.'
A letter written by the Women's Parliamentary Labour Party has called on Mr Burnham to ensure a 50:50 split between men and women in government jobs
Amid reports that former foreign secretary David Miliband (above, right, in 2010) is being lined up to return to the role, possibly with his brother Ed as Chancellor, one female minister complained that Burnham could not have 'more Milibands than women' in the top posts
But Mrs Badenoch told them to pipe down and get chosen on merit instead of retreating into 'more of the failed identity politics that is holding back our country'
A letter written by the Women's Parliamentary Labour Party and seen by the BBC has called on Mr Burnham to ensure a 50:50 split between men and women in government jobs after he succeeds Sir Keir Starmer.
'We are asking you to demonstrate this change from day one and address the toxicity and misogyny within our own party and government,' it said.
Labour has never had a female leader, while the Conservatives have had three, and Mrs Badenoch urged the government to follow its meritocratic example.
'If you run a meritocracy, then you do not have to worry about jobs for the boys,' she wrote.
'Every woman who is a Conservative MP, every woman who has ever won the leadership, has had to fight to get where she is.
'By contrast, Labour women are demanding guarantees from Burnham. But the truth is he doesn't have to give any guarantees.
'If none of Labour's women are prepared to get their hands dirty and challenge him for the leadership, their demands are toothless.'
'In fact, it's quite revealing that the women's parliamentary Labour Party has written to Burnham asking him to commit himself to at least 50 per cent female ministers.
'This has nothing to do with meritocracy. It is yet more of the failed identity politics that is holding back our country.'
Venezuela Fury and Noah Price subsidising their life by livestreaming
Venezuela Fury and her husband Noah Price look to be making their own way in the world by raking it in from their lucrative social media accounts.
The influencer daughter of Tyson and Paris Fury, 16, has become an internet sensation after tying the knot with her husband Noah, 19, earlier this year.
Since getting married and moving in together the couple have been earning thousands of pounds a month, livestreaming their life as newlyweds in their static caravan in the East Riding of Yorkshire.
And fans can't get enough of their regular life updates on TikTok and Kick, which have proved to be very profitable for the pair.
They look to be supporting themselves after Noah denied that he was given £5million by Venezuela's family as a wedding gift.
Despite his wife's huge family wealth, an estimated combined £160 million, Noah recently told his Kick followers that he 'pays for everything' for the couple.
Making light of the claims about Venezuela's millionaire financial status, Noah said: 'I actually pay for everything unfortunately. You'd expect the millionaire to pay for it wouldn't you.'
Venezuela Fury and Noah Price are earning thousands livestreaming their caravan life - after her new groom insisted he pays all the bills and denied he had £5m handout from her dad
The influencer daughter of Tyson and Paris Fury , 16, has become an internet sensation after tying the knot with her husband Noah, 19, earlier this year
Venezuela then asked their fans: 'Do you think I am a millionaire?'
Noah joked: 'She isn't a secret millionaire guys', before she broke into song and sang: 'But I live like a millionaire!'
But it seems according to estimated calculations from their social media work, Noah and Venezuela can more than afford to support themselves.
Noah has been livestreaming on platforms such as Kick and TikTok, where viewers can send paid gifts or donations.
He was previously encouraging viewers to send gifts on his honeymoon during livestreams, suggesting this is one revenue stream.
Both Noah and Venezuela have built substantial followings on Instagram and TikTok. They can potentially earn money through sponsored posts, brand collaborations, affiliate links and creator payouts.
Kick allows its creators to take home 95 per cent of the £4.99 subscription cost that fans pay.
Streamers keep 100 per cent of direct tips and donations, minus minor standard payment processing fees.
It is unclear how many subscribers Noah currently has because this information is hidden, but he does have 7,200 followers which is publicly viewable.
An industry insider has suggested Noah is making around £400 per video on TikTok, while Venezuela is likely to make £2,000 due to her following count of 1.3 million.
An industry insider has suggested Noah is making around £400 per video on TikTok, while Venezuela is likely to make £2,000 due to her following count of 1.3 million
In one video on their honeymoon, Noah asked his followers if they'd give them some more gifts now that they were married.
In a TikTok live viewed by 20,000 he said: 'Keep liking our videos people, keep sending gifts.'
After saying thank you to several of his followers he joked they should stick around on the livestream and 'watch Venezuela punch me in the mouth'.
The other half of the honeymooning couple said: 'I am, honestly!'
Noah previously confirmed that the pair don't share their finances after they were asked whether they have a shared bank account.
'She earns her money, I earn mine,' said Noah, as Venezuela joked: 'Yeah, what you gonna do about it.'
Noah went on to debunk the rumour that Tyson gave him £5million when he tied the knot with his daughter as he insisted: 'No Tyson did not give me £5million'.
Meanwhile Venezuela is being eyed up by executives for a fly on the wall TV series.
Noah went on to debunk the rumour that Tyson gave him £5million when he tied the knot with his daughter as he insisted: 'No Tyson did not give me £5million'
Boasting 1.3 million TikTok followers, Venezuela is already entertaining fans with her honest musings and candid moments, from cooking to kitting out her and Noah's static caravan home.
And following the success of the Netflix series At Home With The Furys, it is no wonder bosses are wanting to draw on the Fury popularity.
A TV insider said: 'The couple are not A-list celebrities but everyone has become obsessed with their love story.
'People are genuinely intrigued by them. Whether it’s the fact they have married so young, Venezuela’s famous family or their gypsy lifestyle, they have the ‘X factor'.
'Several TV executives think a proper fly-on-the-wall series following their lives as newlyweds in the gypsy community would be fascinating,' they told The Sun.
It is thought Netflix would be likely to produce the series due to their already established relationship with the Furys.
Venezuela's representatives told The Daily Mail: 'We have many offers on the table regarding Venezuela which we are discussing.'
