Netflix’s Korean hit Teach You a Lesson, a gritty social drama–action thriller on bullying and school violence, has dominated global charts since its June 5 debut. Director Hong Jong-chan says the premise still has “many stories left to tell” and hints a second season is possible if strong viewership and buzz continue, though no official renewal has been announced yet.
Since its June 5 premiere on Netflix, the ten-episode show Teach You a Lesson has topped the platform's global rankings and dominated buzz charts. And of course it would: it’s a finely crafted social drama-cum-action thriller directed by Hong Jong-chan, a man has a Baeksang Award and a string of socially conscious dramas behind him. Naturally, the question on every viewer's mind now is: will there be more of it?
Below is what we know as of now.
For anyone arriving late to the conversation, the show is built on an actual problem that plagues Korean society: rising cases of bullying (and it’s not like how you imagine it in American high school shows; these kids are known to bully you to literal death), loss of confidence in teachers and the educational system, and the problem of juvenile gang violence. The show answers these problems with the Educational Rights Protection Bureau, a government task force assembled to intervene where school administrations, parents, and existing law have already failed. The bureau's methods are occasionally brutal and entirely unsanctioned by anything resembling standard procedure, but in the end, it works.
Kim Mu-yeol leads as the bureau's central inspector, with Jin Ki-joo, Pyo Ji-hoon (credited under his stage name P.O), and Lee Sung-min rounding out a strong cast. The series reunites Kim and Lee with Hong for the first time since 2022's acclaimed Juvenile Justice. Writer Lee Nam-kyu, known for the gentler Daily Dose of Sunshine, adapted the project from Get Schooled, a Naver webtoon that built its own reputation on courting controversy long before Netflix got involved.
Director Hong Jong-chan, speaking to the press in Seoul alongside his cast, admitted the scale of the show's reception had outpaced his expectations. Hong made the case that the premise still has room to run, pointing out that there are still many stories left to tell from the school setting. But hey, there’s a catch: if the response continues to be good, there may be good news.
So no formal renewal has been announced. But the viewership and the cultural conversation it has sparked make the odds lean favourable. If you’re wondering, the show has topped viewership charts for two weeks in a row now, and it’s success has been so massive that a think tank aligned with South Korea's ruling Democratic Party, the Institute for Democracy, has proposed establishing a real version of the bureau: an agency within the Ministry of Education designed to shield teachers from the avalanche of complaints, investigations, and lawsuits they currently have to face alone. The institute's plan calls for a three-tier structure: a central bureau at the ministry, regional support centres, and field teams at the local level, explicitly framed as a support mechanism rather than an investigative one like the ERPB. Things have gone so far that Hong himself has since stepped in to clarify that the ERPB is a fictional construct, not a policy blueprint, and shouldn't be mistaken for one.
So if successful reception is the metric, maybe, just maybe, the good news about season 2 is not too far away after all.