Netflix's 'Cham Gyoyuk' director denies real-case basis: "We created the story through imagination"

Cham Gyoyuk is sitting at No. 1 on Netflix's global TOP 10 non-English shows. Director Hong Jong-chan wants to be clear about one thing.

In an interview held June 11 in Samcheong-dong, Seoul, Hong pushed back on the widespread viewer reaction that several of the show's 10 episodes mirror real incidents, including the death of teacher Seo Yi-cho and the Sookmyung Girls' High School twins case. "You can think of it as us creating the story through imagination," he said. "There was also content from the original work."

Hong acknowledged the pattern without claiming coincidence. "There would be many similar types of incidents and similar cases" in Korean society, he said. The resonance comes from how often these situations repeat — not from any single source event.

The series, adapted from a webtoon of the same name, follows the Educational Rights Protection Bureau, a fictional unit created to defend a school system collapsing under students, teachers, and parents who overstep boundaries. The Korean Teachers and Education Workers' Union issued a statement saying the show reflects the reality of classroom collapse and called on the government and political circles to pursue institutional improvements in teacher rights protection. Hong said he hadn't read the statement directly but knew it had been issued. "It's good that various reactions come out," he said.

On the global chart performance, Hong pointed to something he sees as universal. "The stories and relationships that happen in the space of a school are similar in any country," he said. He cited a line from the show's own dialogue: it takes a whole village to raise a child. That line lands the same way whether you're watching in Seoul or anywhere else.