Teach You a Lesson Episode 8 Recap

A collapse in Class S

A news report says the Educational Rights Protection Bureau (ERPB) has ordered urine tests for every student in the country. Officially they check for kidney problems and diabetes, but critics suspect a drug screen, and some schools refuse, citing final exams. The focus turns to Seungyeon High School, the most competitive school in Gangnam and the country's top feeder to Seoul National University's medical school. A member of the team who grew up nearby says the students there have notoriously demanding parents. Class S is the school's class for seniors aiming at medical school. There, a teacher warns that this is the last exam for early admission, with only the CSAT, the national college entrance exam, left after it.

Mid-exam, top student Jung Hyeon-min starts bleeding from the nose and collapses. Bureau staff already at the school have him carried to the nurse's office. His mother storms in, demands that the exam be stopped so her son can still take it and tells him the teacher will let him finish. Hyeon-min says he feels sick and keeps having strange thoughts. She blames his lack of focus, gives him his medicine and tells him not to waste their hard work.

The mothers of Daechi-dong

The students are ordered to stay behind for urine tests. Hyeon-min's mother rounds up the other mothers, and they confront Inspector Na Hwa-jin. One point can decide an admission, they insist, and their families are at war. When Hwa-jin confirms the tests screen for drugs, they take offense: their children are headed for medical school and are not like other kids. He warns that anyone who refuses will be penalized on their CSAT results. One mother reminds him that this is Daechi-dong, the Gangnam neighborhood built around private academies, and Hwa-jin answers that the tests are meant to keep children alive. He orders the children brought to a bureau hospital before school the next morning, and tells Hyeon-min's mother that her son looked unwell.

In prison, Cho Gyu-cheol receives a visitor he knows from television, opposition leader Hwang Gi-tae. Gi-tae says he heard the bureau is to blame for Gyu-cheol's injured hand, and Gyu-cheol replies that it was his own doing. Gi-tae offers his help, calls giving people chances his job as a politician and urges him to have the hand treated at an outside hospital.

The whole school is tested. Hyeon-min's emailed report card includes the exam he passed out in, and he apologizes to his mother. She tells him that children who cannot handle pressure need their medicine. Because of him, she complains, she has had to bow to the other mothers.

A mother's plan for medical school

A flashback returns to Hyeon-min's first year of middle school, when his mother meets an admissions consultant. Top marks at a provincial school count for little in Gangnam, the consultant says, where mothers plan for medical school from birth, and Hyeon-min is far behind. The family moves into a Daechi apartment advertised as a home that sent boys to the university's medical school. Hyeon-min's father hesitates, noting that his younger brother, a doctor, got him his hospital job. His wife says that is why his family looks down on him, and vows that nobody will look down on their son. She has her husband take Hyeon-min's door off, and notes on the wall set the goals: Seungyeon High, then medical school.

Another mother tells her to win over Da-hui's mother, whom the other mothers trail like piglets after a sow, because she controls the best tutors, consultants and academies. Hyeon-min's mother sets him a schedule with three hours of sleep and rations his food so he stays alert, while his father lives apart from them. She brings Da-hui's mother gifts, joins the meetings and hires the recommended tutors. When Hyeon-min still misses the medical school prep class in high school, Da-hui's mother hands her pills that she says raised Da-hui's focus and grades. Hyeon-min's mother gives them to her son, telling him every child in the neighborhood takes them.

What the tests find

Back in the present, Hwa-jin tells the mothers that the pills are an ADHD drug not approved in Korea. The urine tests show methylphenidate and atomoxetine, a pairing prescribed only rarely, to high-risk patients. Methylphenidate is controlled under the Narcotics Control Act, so everyone in the room will be questioned by the police. A colleague warns that Hyeon-min's results are especially serious, but his mother has already slipped away.

Another flashback shows that when Hyeon-min's grades rise, she asks the group for something stronger, and a mother offers her the pills that last year's top student took. Hyeon-min's next result puts him in the top tier and wins him a place in the prep class.

Racing to the apartment, the team learns that Hyeon-min's urine also holds a substance found in heart pills, at close to a lethal dose. At home, his mother tells him early admission is gone but he can study from home for the CSAT. Hyeon-min swears at her and demands his pills, and she goes to get them. No one will open the door, so one team member decides to go in from outside, saying the boy could die otherwise. Hyeon-min fights to keep his pills, but the team, Inspector Im Han-rim among them, sends him to the hospital while his mother screams for her son.

Hwa-jin tells the mother that students call the drug a focus pill or a ticket to medical school, but the bureau calls it "something that kills kids." She claims she had no idea. Flashbacks show her pinching her son's bleeding nose and a note in which he writes that he wants to die. Pressed, she admits she meant to give him the pills only until the CSAT. Hwa-jin confines her to the apartment, saying the bureau must keep a child abuser away from the victim. When she asks who will take the blame if her son fails, he answers: "If you want med school that badly, then go yourself."

The mirror treatment

At the hospital, Hyeon-min starts hitting his head, and Deputy Director Bong Geun-dae puts his hand in the way and is hurt. Geun-dae says the boy reminds him of himself, since his own mother wanted him in medical school too.

At the apartment, Hwa-jin sets CSAT practice questions in front of the mother. She says she has no inheritance or connections to give her son, and he replies that she should become a doctor herself and be his backing. He hands her the study plan and meal schedule she wrote for Hyeon-min. She may see him, he says, once her practice scores beat the medical school cut-off. She works through English sections, starting over after a single mistake, eats a small supper billed as brain food and sleeps at one in the morning. When she will not get up, Hwa-jin throws out her bed for getting in the way of studying, as she once removed her son's door. He calls it the mirror treatment and says the only way out is passing the CSAT.

At the hospital, Hyeon-min begs Geun-dae for a single pill. Geun-dae refuses. One pill always becomes one more, he warns, and the drug wrecks the body, the mind and then a whole life. At the apartment, the mother fails one practice exam after another, though her score creeps up.

Hyeon-min describes his life as a hell that would not end until he got into medical school. He says he wanted to die, and the pills took that feeling away for a while. When he is told to quit the pills, the studying and even his mother, he asks how anyone quits a mother, and the person who said it backs down.

The mother begs to be let out because it is too hard. Hwa-jin points out that she never let her son quit. She lists what she gave up: a lovely home, serving the other mothers, every morning spent making breakfast, any life of her own. Hwa-jin tells her she did not sacrifice herself for her son; Hyeon-min sacrificed himself for her. Flashbacks show a young Hyeon-min drawing a doctor as his dream job to please her.

At the hospital, Hyeon-min tells Geun-dae and Han-rim that he can name dozens of things his mother likes and nothing he likes himself. Geun-dae promises they will work it out together. He brings children's books from the pediatric center, over Han-rim's objection that Hyeon-min is not a child.

Hwa-jin finally takes the mother to see her son. She soon brings up the CSAT, and Hyeon-min tells her he will not sit the exam this year or go to medical school. He promises to take the CSAT next year and asks her to back whatever he decides: "I'm still your son." She insists he has to become a doctor. He leaves for treatment, asking her to stop giving up her life for his.

Heart Pills and an old diary

The bureau announces that school tests found many students positive for unapproved ADHD drugs. In several cases the drug is a so-called study aid known as Heart Pill, which contains narcotic ingredients. From now on, students will be screened before the CSAT, and anyone who tests positive will be disqualified. The team studies older versions of the pill, each stamped with a dealer's marking: Full Moon from ten years ago and Snowman from five years ago. When the version popular two years ago comes out, someone asks for a closer look. Elsewhere, dealers complain that the bureau has shut down their business and decide it has to go.

Pages from Choi Ga-yun's diary follow, with drawings that match the pills and entries asking what she should do about Gyu-cheol and whether she can ever forgive him. In prison, Gyu-cheol is asked what he would do if his parole hearing goes well, and he says he would like to go back to school. His trial is recalled. The prosecution charges him with the premeditated murder of Ga-yun and seeks 15 years. The defense argues that he was changing under her guidance and that her death was an accident.

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