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.
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.
