A big break with a side of backlash: Jin Ki-joo opens up about 'Teach You a Lesson'

Speaking with reporters, Jin Ki-joo is nothing like her breakout character from “Teach You a Lesson,” the hottest series on Netflix right now.

The actor is soft-spoken and articulate, taking time to choose her words. Quite a difference from Im Han-rim, the former military operative she plays, who barks out orders, hotly berates bullies and tends to act first and think later.

Han-rim’s abrupt shifts from a measured tone to a booming, high-pitched shout were inspired by soldiers Jin observed on variety shows and in documentaries, she said.

“[The soldiers] have this distinct, almost animalistic strength at their core,” Jin said at a roundtable interview in Seoul on Tuesday. “The shouting seems like a way of driving themselves mentally to the absolute limit and asserting control.”

The idea took shape after Lee Sung-min, who plays Minister of Education Choi Gang-seok in the series, first suggested it at a script reading, Jin said. “Everyone thought it would bring something fresh to the character.”

The booming voice became one of the character’s most talked-about traits after the series aired. Some viewers found it endearing and perfectly suited to Han-rim's role as the show’s resident “madwoman”; others found it so cartoonish that they couldn’t take the character seriously.

But Jin felt the voice captured Han-rim's journey from a victim who once ran desperately from bullies to a formidable former soldier.

“She must have gone through unimaginable training to become that strong,” she said. “I thought of that roar as the sound she used to push through it all, something that jolted her awake whenever she wanted to stop. It would have become second nature to her.”

“Teach You a Lesson” follows the Educational Rights Protection Bureau, a fictional agency that protects victims of bullying and restores order in schools by any means necessary, including violence. Han-rim is one of its field agents who punishes students, teachers and parents who are out of line, alongside Na Hwa-jin, played by Kim Moo-yul, and Bong Geun-dae, played by Pyo Ji-hoon.

The role is arguably Jin’s biggest yet. While she has taken lead roles in shows including the movie “Little Forest” (2018) and series “My Perfect Stranger” (2023) and “Uncle SamSik” (2024), none of them have matched the explosive popularity “Teach You a Lesson” has enjoyed since its release on June 5. The series ranked No. 1 on Netflix in Korea and 43 other countries and regions across Europe, South America and Asia as of Monday, according to streaming analytics site FlixPatrol.

With the attention has come followers — Jin says she gained around 500,000 to 600,000 more followers on Instagram since “Teach You a Lesson” — but also sharper scrutiny, including of her acting. The series itself has drawn controversy over its subject matter and the webtoon it was adapted from, something director Hong Jong-chan has acknowledged and said he tried to address by excluding storylines criticized as sexist and racist.

Jin said she chose to do the show because it upheld what she saw as a “basic sense of justice”: victims being able to find comfort and get back on their feet, while bullies come to understand what they did wrong, reflect and learn to live better.

“In the world we live in, what should be obvious is not always treated that way,” Jin said. “I liked that the drama made those principles so clear.”

As for the critique, Jin said she remained deeply attached to Han-rim because she had worked so hard on the role and shaped the character together with the cast.

“People are different, and we all have to live alongside one another, so I think it’s only right that there are different opinions,” she said.

That doesn’t mean she isn’t bothered. “People who know me well say I’m made of glass,” she said. “But what can I do? I just have to hang in there.”

The success of “Teach You a Lesson” has also revived interest in Jin’s unconventional path to acting. She worked as an IT consultant at Samsung SDS, Korea’s largest cloud service provider, as a reporter at the G1 Broadcasting Company and as a model before making her acting debut in 2015.

A farewell letter she wrote to colleagues when she left Samsung has gone viral again. In it, Jin wrote that she had “drawn the sword before it was too late” to pursue her dreams.

“Looking back at it, I thought, ‘I really was desperate,’” she said.

BY KIM JU-YEON [[email protected]]