Teach You a Lesson Episode 6 Recap

Gang-seok warns Hwa-jin about revenge

In a voice-over, an unnamed young man says Ms. Choi was the one adult who was kind to him and believed in him, and that he now knows he was in love with her. At Na Hwa-jin's unlit home, Choi Gang-seok, the Minister of Education, arrives with homemade kimchi and tells him not to live alone in the dark. The moment revenge drives the Educational Rights Protection Bureau (ERPB), he warns, it will have gone too far, and he says he does not want to have to tell Hwa-jin to forget his daughter. Hwa-jin accepts the warning, and the two bicker until Hwa-jin offers to go out for fresh rice. On the news, the ERPB tops 50 percent approval for the first time, and Gang-seok rises in a presidential poll. Critics note that the bureau's core members are tied to the teacher murdered two years ago.

Deputy Director Bong Geun-dae asks to go home early, since every time they are together, something extends his work hours. Then the group spots boys in school uniforms breaking into a car. Because they are students, Hwa-jin will not leave it to the police. He tells them he works for the ERPB and asks what they are doing with the girl inside. The boys drive off with her anyway, a boy named Min-su at the wheel, jeering at the inspectors throughout the chase. The ride ends abruptly, and when asked who they are, they say they are juvenile offenders: "We're 14, actually."

Four boys walk free

At the Incheon Ganghwa Police Station, the team explains that a colleague threw a bicycle that jammed under the stolen car. The girl, Oh Yun-jin, can barely stay awake. The boys insist she is just drunk and that they are all friends, which she confirms. Accused of car theft, unlicensed driving and traffic violations, they stage an apology and blame puberty, until Im Han-rim loses her temper and Hwa-jin reins her in. The boys are regulars, an officer explains, and they know their age protects them. So the police can only wait on the juvenile court and let them go with a warning. Their homeroom teacher, Mr. Lee, signs them out.

The officer then tells Hwa-jin and Han-rim that the boys have reported them for child abuse through an app. Mr. Lee apologizes and admits the school is helpless: minors cannot be held liable, and because middle school is compulsory, expelling them is close to impossible. Later, Gang-seok teases Hwa-jin for being beaten by children and wonders whether he trusted former Special Forces men too much. The same boys ride past, mocking the adults and wishing them luck with their car. They attend Hyeonjin Middle School, where the team starts work the next morning.

Yun-jin's secret at Hyeonjin Middle School

On campus, the boys are pushing a classmate around when Hwa-jin greets them and announces that the bureau is investigating the school. He pulls the four out of class, and they guess that he is keeping them busy while other students give statements. Even with confidentiality promised, no student will say a word about Min Ji-ung's gang. Geun-dae tells Han-rim that Yun-jin spends time with Ji-ung without being his friend, and that she is missing from class. Reasoning that gangs hide where cleaners work, they search the camera feeds and settle on a utilities building near the gym. Yun-jin is locked inside, and Han-rim forces her way in.

Yun-jin claims she was drinking the night before, but Han-rim noticed no smell of alcohol. Her bag holds pills she calls vitamins, and when Han-rim pretends to swallow one, Yun-jin stops her. A flashback shows how it started. Teased about her weight, Yun-jin accepts a small heart-shaped pill from a classmate who says it helped someone lose 40 pounds. When she asks Ji-ung for more, the price climbs from 30,000 to 50,000 won. With no money, she is made to sell the pills for him and ordered to raise the price by 20,000 won. When she begs to quit, Ji-ung takes the pills back, throws away what he calls 50,000 won worth and offers her another chance.

Yun-jin eventually drops a letter into the school's police reporting box, and officers take the boys away. They come back to school. The police told them about her letter, they say, and as minors they walked free. They lock her in, and Ji-ung tells her through the door to accept her punishment before the gang goes off to eat. Back in the present, Yun-jin refuses to testify. She has tried before, she says, and every time the teacher, the school and the police failed, things got worse, until death seemed like her only escape. She is promised that this time will be different and that the bureau will look after her.

The bureau takes the boys to prison

The boys' written statements consist of an obscene insult. When Hwa-jin raises the drug sales, Ji-ung admits them, promises to stop once he is an adult and dares the inspectors to lock him up. Over a montage set to a song, the team collects the boys one at a time. Ji-ung is told he is charged with inciting school violence, selling narcotics and forcing students to deal for him. The boys are driven to Gimcheon Juvenile Prison, which they are told is the only juvenile detention center in Korea. An official warns Gang-seok that a leak could bring charges of abuse and negligence, but the Minister takes responsibility. "One of us needs to be the adult," he says.

Inside, the boys are searched, given inmate numbers and told they will be treated like every other prisoner. Locked in a shared cell, they threaten to report everyone. Han-rim tells them the only way out is to defeat her. Outside, Hwa-jin tells a worried Geun-dae that the danger is to the four boys. She beats all of them, noting that an officer may answer an inmate's violence in kind. Their days fill with roll calls, drills, computer classes and hard labor in the heat, and they learn that red tags on some inmates' shirts mark killers. At meals, they are sent to the front of the line as special guests and take all the sausages, leaving the other prisoners rice, kimchi and salad. Then they are handed the greasy dishes and wonder whether their parents know where they are.

In the kitchen, an older inmate gets water in Ji-ung's eyes and apologizes, and Ji-ung turns on him. When the guards break it up, the man claims he fell and that Ji-ung was helping him out of the water. Then he promises Ji-ung he will never forget it. Ji-ung is warned that the man is Kim Su-gyeom, a former bullying victim who killed every one of his tormentors, and one boy recognizes the case from the news. When a spoon goes missing, a boy accuses Su-gyeom of taking it, but his pocket holds only toothpaste. Su-gyeom tells Ji-ung that he is already serving the maximum sentence, so another killing would change nothing. He vows to make the prison Ji-ung's personal hell.

Parents face the evidence

At the Ministry of Education, the boys' parents protest and corner Gang-seok. He confirms that their sons are in a real prison and calls it a field trip. He tells them to write down what their children did and invites them to come the next day, which may be their last chance to see the boys. At the meeting, the parents fuss over the boys' hair and prison clothes and complain about the dishes and the dangerous inmates. Gang-seok produces a bag of pills, and Ji-ung calls them diet pills that the other kids forced him to get. In the scuffle that follows, one boy swallows a pill and panics, sure he will die, but the pills are vitamins and his fear gives him away. The real pills are phentermine, a prescription-only drug, and the bureau shows that the gang's network earned more than 50 million won.

The parents call the boys children who made mistakes and offer a settlement for the victims. The bureau answers that the basic rule of society is to treat others as you wish to be treated, that parents, then schools, then society should have taught it, and that the bureau stepped in because no one did. Prompted by his mother, Ji-ung tearfully begs for one more chance. "Don't ask us for forgiveness. Ask your victim," comes the reply, and Yun-jin tells the boys she will never forgive them and that school was hell. Ji-ung lunges at her, shouting that as a juvenile offender he could kill her and get away with it. The parents' request for release is denied, and the boys are taken back to detention over their parents' protests.

The bureau announces that Korean schools will no longer admit students with criminal records, after decades of failed calls for legal reform. At the prison, Su-gyeom welcomes the boys back, and they learn they will stay until they turn 18. From behind a locked door, one of them begs Yun-jin to let him out, echoing her own pleas. The team thanks the staff and Su-gyeom, who has been helping the bureau. He asked for little in return, except that no one else should turn out like him. Later, an inmate asks Ji-ung about the boss of the BS gang, warns him that the boss can get paranoid and bids him good night before the attack comes. A young man steps in the way. He is Cho Gyu-cheol, the student who killed Choi Ga-yun, though no one in the episode says his name.

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