Teach You a Lesson Episode 4 Recap

The bureau's secret goes public

At the Educational Rights Protection Bureau (ERPB), Im Han-rim watches a press conference. The speaker says the bureau grew out of a young teacher's death. She was the daughter of Minister of Education Choi Gang-seok and Inspector Na Hwa-jin's fiancée, and the speaker calls the whole operation revenge. Han-rim asks Hwa-jin if it is true, and he says all of it is. Deputy Director Bong Geun-dae, meanwhile, is typing a transfer request that calls the team's leadership tyrannical. Gang-seok reads it over his shoulder, praises the font and tells him that anything short of a real reason to leave sounds like whining.

Geun-dae then briefs the team on a report from Chukmyeong Foreign Language High School. A teacher who saw a student, Park Hyeon-ung, attack a colleague in class sent it in with video. On campus, Geun-dae explains that the school's rise to the top is credited to its star teacher, Cheon Sang-yeol. Hwa-jin introduces himself to Sang-yeol and thanks him: the teacher's online lectures got him into the Military Academy. When Sang-yeol asks him to drop the matter before midterms, Hwa-jin says Hyeon-ung cannot go unpunished, then begs for the teacher's famous sign-off. Sang-yeol snaps a piece of chalk and delivers it, "You must believe in your potential," while Han-rim watches the fanboying in disbelief.

Hyeon-ung tells his side

Han-rim questions Hyeon-ung, who refuses to explain and dares the bureau to expel or report him. The teacher who filed the report describes Sang-yeol as a mentor who sits up all night with students waiting for university results. Han-rim writes Hyeon-ung off as a failing student until his report card shows he ranks first in the school.

Sang-yeol shows Hwa-jin the exam management office, where he keeps the midterm papers as Head of Academic Affairs. The two laugh about sharing a boyhood dream of stealing exams. Asked why Hyeon-ung might have hit him, Sang-yeol points to a special class for gifted students that the boy stopped attending. In a flashback, Hyeon-ung protests that the class keeps going over first-year basics. Sang-yeol also mentions that he recently went to see Hyeon-ung's parents at their restaurant in the countryside.

When Han-rim threatens to tell his parents about the assault herself, Hyeon-ung struggles against her and breaks down. She tells him to ask for help: "The first step to getting help is asking for help." He finally talks. Soon after Sang-yeol's visit, someone reported the restaurant for having no license, and it was ordered closed. His tuition went unpaid. His parents found him a private tutor anyway. The tutor quit right after Sang-yeol asked for the tutor's name.

Hwa-jin, meanwhile, trails Sang-yeol around campus as the teacher picks up stones so students will not trip. He flatters Sang-yeol as Seoul's next Superintendent of Education and promises the usual protocol for Hyeon-ung. Han-rim finds Hwa-jin rewatching Sang-yeol's online videos and urges him to hear the boy out, but he brushes her off. She accuses him of judging the case in advance and asks whether the bureau's work is only a personal vendetta. Hwa-jin tells her to get back to work and stay focused.

Hwa-jin's quiet investigation

A ranking of third-year students shows that Sang-yeol teaches most of the top performers, including Jung Su-jeong in 11th place. Posing as a Chukmyeong student, Geun-dae walks into the Noavis Institute, a private academy, and is told registration is closed. A staff member catches him out with the wrong name for his class president and demands to know who sent him. Then Kim Hyeong-ju, his friend from Guun High-Tech High School, happens to spot Geun-dae and greets him by name, and the questioning stops.

In a flashback, a schoolgirl Han-rim is chased by classmates for standing up for an outcast. A passing soldier, Hwa-jin, asks whether she wants help and tells her to ask for it, in the same words she uses on Hyeon-ung. She begs him to help her. The bullies insist a soldier cannot lay a hand on a kid, then flee calling him crazy. Hwa-jin offers her his hand.

Over tea, Hwa-jin tells Sang-yeol that every top student in his class attends Noavis, except Hyeon-ung. He asks who gains if Hyeon-ung misses the exam and names Su-jeong, who would climb into the top ten. He then raises Han Ye-ri, the Soyeon Girls' High School student from the bureau's previous case, whom Sang-yeol taught in middle school. Ye-ri failed the Chukmyeong entrance exam despite strong grades, and the last place went to Su-jeong. Hwa-jin accuses Sang-yeol of using the same tactics on her: the pointless special class, the tutor driven off and the family store shut down.

A flashback returns to Hwa-jin's earlier visit to Ye-ri, now in custody. She resents him for making her life miserable, and she recalls Sang-yeol telling her she was trash, like her parents, and always would be. Back at the tea table, Sang-yeol remarks that Ye-ri caused trouble at Soyeon, and Hwa-jin points out that he never mentioned any trouble. Hwa-jin then promises that Hyeon-ung will sit the exam.

Police move on the bureau

Hyeon-ung returns to class to whispers that he should have been expelled. At a restaurant, Su-jeong's mother, Kim Yeong-ran, demands to know why Hyeon-ung is being allowed to take the exam. She reminds Sang-yeol that she pays him ten times what other parents pay and that his superintendent hopes depend on her. Sang-yeol calls her daughter a fool and says Su-jeong needs him more than he needs her.

Han-rim tells Geun-dae that the inspector cares only about his hero. Geun-dae corrects her. Since visiting Ye-ri, Hwa-jin has been investigating Sang-yeol and told Geun-dae to look into the top students in his class, which led Geun-dae to Noavis. Han-rim was kept out of it because she is a poor liar. When she confronts Hwa-jin, he says his admiration was real and he had hoped the teacher truly was an inspiration. Hurt that he hid his plan, she cries, and he tells her to follow his lead. Before they can move on Sang-yeol, police arrive with reports that Hwa-jin used excessive force on students at Daehan and Guun High.

Officers serve a search and seizure warrant on the bureau for abuse of authority. The news reports that prosecutors are investigating Gang-seok for tax evasion. Hwang Gi-tae's aides suggest leaks to the press, and Gang-seok is pressed on whether hiring Hwa-jin was a conflict of interest. At a police station, the team remarks that events have gone just as Hwa-jin predicted, with the press, police, tax officials and prosecutors moving at once. Hwa-jin says they are better off staying put until next week, when the exam takes place.

At Noavis, Yeong-ran has seen on the news that the bureau is no longer a problem, and Sang-yeol says he pulled some strings. He sends the exam to her phone and tells her to have her daughter memorize it. She promises to back his fundraiser and says the superintendent post is his if the exam goes well.

At the station, Hwa-jin tells an officer that Geun-dae simply carries out orders, and Geun-dae is released. Hwa-jin orders him to print his transfer request, and when Geun-dae says he has changed his mind, shouts him down. Hwa-jin signs the form and tells him to leave with his head high. Han-rim says goodbye.

Exam day at Chukmyeong

On exam day, Hyeon-ung sits the midterm while classmates jeer, and a reporter grills Gang-seok on whether he founded the bureau out of revenge. In the exam management office, Sang-yeol runs the papers through the marking program and finds that Su-jeong has scored zero in calculus. Realizing the papers are not the ones he wrote, he storms into the classroom and orders everyone to stop. Hwa-jin appears, tells the students to keep going and says the bureau switched the exam.

When Sang-yeol objects that the whole team was locked up, Hwa-jin recalls signing Geun-dae's transfer form. The paperwork carried Hwa-jin's order to switch the exam papers, a guide to the school and a note that his boyhood dream of stealing exams has come true. Sang-yeol tries to snatch answer sheets from students. Hwa-jin stops him, reminding him that the ban on disturbing an exam applies to teachers too.

A bureau video then takes over the classroom screen. Su-jeong's answers match Sang-yeol's original paper exactly. They earn her a perfect score on his version and a zero on the bureau's, which kept his questions but changed their order. A classmate spots answers written on Su-jeong's hand, and a recording of Sang-yeol's meeting with Yeong-ran plays to the room. Sang-yeol protests that it is out of context as the students who trusted him turn on him. Afterward, Hwa-jin sits Hyeon-ung down to a meal and tells him to leave Sang-yeol to him.

Gang-seok turns the hearing around

At a hearing, Gi-tae introduces himself as leader of the Mirae Daehan Party and repeats that the bureau was born of revenge. He reads out Article 8 of its rules, which exempts inspectors from the conduct laws binding other civil servants. Under it, he warns, an inspector could get away with murder. A prison guard, Yoon Sun-yeol, testifies that after the trial two years ago he saw a man drive a car straight at the prisoner Cho Gyu-cheol. He identifies the man as Hwa-jin. Gi-tae says the Minister made that man head inspector and demands that the bureau be abolished.

Gang-seok sets the accusations aside. He reveals that the bureau found grade fixing at Chukmyeong involving Sang-yeol, parents and the Noavis Institute, down to an entire midterm handed to one student. He reads out the parents' names, starting with Yeong-ran, wife of the PH Group chairman, and ending with a sitting member of the National Assembly, as the accused cry slander. The bureau sides with neither teachers nor students, he tells the room: "We are on the side of the victims." If that makes it a personal vendetta, he says, someone has to take revenge when the law will not. He then announces that everyone named is barred from leaving the country.

Outside the school, Hwa-jin credits Geun-dae's new computer screens for the operation, and Hyeon-ung thanks Han-rim, who tells him not to give up. Asked how he got the list of parents, Hwa-jin says he offered to let people off in exchange for a name, and they gave him every one. At the police station, the arrested parents demand their lawyers. Sang-yeol, in custody, is brought before Ye-ri and told the meeting is meant to show him how he ruined his student's life.

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