A flower on a desk, a hearse through the schoolyard — Korean teens learn grades aren't everything the hard way.
In a high school second grade classroom, Bonggu (Gyu Seok) and Genija (Choi Soo-hoon), whose grades are low, love each other (Yi Yeon Yeon) and Niho teacher. The hard - luck Changshu helps his mother to clean the liquor, but the Eun - joo, who grew up in a rich environment, screams without understanding him. Eunju is always attracted to the innocence of the pure mind while maintaining good grades and suffering obsession with the grades due to the obsession of the parents. She takes her parents' cold eyes when she is pushed to the seventh place by the next exam. Eunju can not endure it and suicide. In the classroom, a flower is placed on the desk of Eun-joo, and the hearse and the children are tears as the hearse runs the school.
Acting
Lee Mi-yeon breaks your heart before she even speaks.
Direction
Kang Woo-suk makes test rankings feel like life-or-death thrillers.
Writing
Rich girl/poor boy parallels that actually land emotionally.
Director
Kang Woo-suk
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
This 1989 film predates Korea's 'exam hell' discourse by decades, yet predicted the 2010s teen suicide crisis. Director Kang Woo-suk would later become a blockbuster king with Public Enemy — this was his serious phase.
The classroom flower ritual became so iconic that Korean students still reference it when memorializing classmates. Lee Mi-yeon was only 19; her performance convinced parents to pull their kids from hagwons.
No ratings yet
Sign in to join the discussion — comments are spoiler-gated to your watch progress.
Discussion starters
KR
