How Netflix’s K-drama Extracurricular, starring Kim Dong-hee, holds a mirror up to Korea’s teen chat room sex scandal
Itaewon Class star is back in this timely series exposing how and why teenagers find themselves entangled in dangerous sex crimes
Touching on the hard-to-watch issue that involves minors, Extracurricular lets viewers into its fictional characters’ lives, exposing how and why these underage kids find themselves entangled in dangerous sex crimes.
Extracurricular activity
In Extracurricular, an online app called Doggo mediates compensated dates between clients and sex workers, providing the latter with security against psycho clients. Although a work of fiction, the series offered an accidental mirror onto Korea’s current sex case.
Actor Kim Dong-hee who plays Ji-soo shared via Soompi: “When I read the script, it made me think that adults should take more interest in teenagers.”
The main characters are high schoolers with no parents – or dysfunctional ones. All Oh Ji-soo wants is a normal life: get into college, find a job and start a family. To achieve this, he develops the Doggo app to earn big money and send himself to school.
Bae Gyu-ri, who has long wanted to escape her hellish home, sees it as a chance to earn a living and cut ties from her parents; while Seo Min-hee, who finds validation in her thug boyfriend, engages in sex work through the app so she can buy her man expensive gifts.