Netflix Recommendation: Black Dog — A Drama Like a Cold, Slightly Bitter Iced Americano
Black Dog is a drama I didn't expect much from — and then got completely absorbed in.
Netflix Recommendation: Black Dog — A Drama Like a Cold, Slightly Bitter Iced Americano
Black Dog is a drama I didn't expect much from — and then got completely absorbed in.
I came across it while browsing through some series on Netflix, and I ended up so taken with it that I found myself wondering: how did this well-crafted drama not make a bigger splash?
Looking it up after finishing it, I discovered it had aired on tvN Monday-Tuesday in December 2019 through February 2020 and had built a devoted fan base during its run. I hadn't noticed it at the time — I was going through a departmental move, and it was the early days of the COVID outbreak.
The leads are Seo Hyun-jin and Ra Mi-ran, among the four-member academic guidance team. Seo Hyun-jin is an actress I've loved watching since Another Miss Oh, so I came in with expectations. Her understated, unforced quality feels like it suits the character well. I later read that both of her parents were teachers.
[Story Summary]
Go Ha-neul barely survived a school trip accident in her student days, rescued by a teacher who gave their life.
She carries forward the dream of becoming a teacher herself and passes the interview to become a contract teacher at the prestigious Daechi High School in Seoul.
A realistic coming-of-age drama about the daily life and realities of the South Korean high school system, seen through the eyes of a first-year teacher just starting out.
[Ratings]
Watcha: 4.0 / 5
My personal rating: 4.5 / 5
1. The School Version of Misaeng — Jang Geu-rae is Everywhere
The first thing I want to say after watching Black Dog is, inevitably, Misaeng. The venue shifts from a trading company to a school, and the protagonist's circumstances are different — but the message is similar. The writer is telling us that we are all incomplete, unfinished "misaeng" figures, and that any of us could be a "black dog."
I found myself connecting more with Black Dog than with Misaeng personally, because of high school memories. In Misaeng, the company stands in as a representative workplace environment — but as someone who has lived a somewhat different life from the typical office worker, there were parts I found hard to relate to. (There were also moments where I kept comparing it to how the original webtoon had felt.)
But with Black Dog, most people of my generation have been through high school, and have looked at teachers from the student side — so the resonance is there. Looking back, those years were luminous at times and like a dark tunnel at others. The teachers who lived through that black-and-white time on repeat, enduring it as both a workplace and a life — I had never thought deeply about them.
After watching, I reached out to a close friend who has been a teacher for over ten years. "You must have it hard," I said. School is addressed through many social issues — the erosion of teachers' authority, the academization of schools — but for those who live their lives inside it, each issue is a problem to be solved and a source of worry.
Black Dog generated enormous discussion among practicing teachers during its broadcast, reportedly because of how accurately it depicted real school life. Writer Park Joo-yeon taught Korean at a high school for three years and Black Dog is her debut full-length work. Writing what she knew from the ground up — pulling off such an accomplished first full work is remarkable, and deserves applause.
The drama also brought back many memories of my own early working years. Watching Go Ha-neul taking the teacher certification exam and private school entrance exams reminded me of memorizing general knowledge for job tests. Watching teacher hiring scenes — the interview questions, the demonstration lessons — brought back the nervousness of multiple failed entrance exams and tension-filled interviews. Beyond those, there were scenes of writing student records, teachers holding subject meetings, department head meetings in the principal's office, the morning routine of changing into indoor slippers in the faculty room... Everyday details that were exactly right.
The drama doesn't just offer realistic, unstimulating content — it also earns emotional weight through messages that don't fit neatly into any template. The anxieties and struggles of contract teachers and the precarious young are portrayed without becoming mired in them. There's no candy-type ending where the protagonist overcomes all difficulties through sheer will. Teacher Ji Hae-won isn't drawn as a simple villain — she's portrayed in three dimensions. Conflicts don't escalate to extremes; the "crazy dog" and the hothead are at the level of "oh, we have one of those at our office too." Good people sometimes lose out; sometimes they grit their teeth and fight back, then feel guilty for having fought back and reach a hand out again. Our compressed lives are woven into the space of Daechi High School and its faculty room.
2. Seong-soon Bought a Banana and Two Watermelons
The second story is about the "Banana Incident" episode in episode 8. It was initially considered a black comedy scenario that seemed absurd, but it became fascinating material — practicing teachers wrote that it was "a mirror image of reality" and something they encounter regularly.
A Practicing Teacher's View of 'Black Dog': This Scene Is a Copy of Reality
[TV Review] tvN Monday-Tuesday drama Black Dog, which breaks the grammar of conventional school dramas
(https://star.ohmynews.com/NWS_Web/OhmyStar/at_pg.aspx?CNTN_CD=A0002602705)
Many netizens debated and fought over whether the banana answer was correct, and whether the episode was based on real events. In one online community, over 6,000 people voted. The result was almost exactly 50-50 between "it should be recognized as correct" and "it cannot be recognized as correct."
To briefly explain: it was a past exam question asking you to write three ways a given sentence could be interpreted.
"Seong-soon bought a banana and two watermelons."
The intended answers were 1) bought 1 banana, 1 watermelon, 2) bought 1 banana, 2 watermelons, 3) bought 2 bananas, 2 watermelons. But top-scoring students interpreted "banana" as a name and wrote: "Seong-soon bought 2 watermelons with a friend called Banana."
Since the question didn't specify that banana is a fruit, it is "logically" coherent. The problem was that the exam graders initially marked it wrong. Teacher Go Ha-neul consults all the way up to a college entrance exam committee member before finally accepting multiple correct answers.
In terms of the story's flow and pacing, the episode depicts these high-achieving students as somewhat cheeky — but personally I thought: "If there's ambiguity in the problem, of course the correct answer should be revised." The date the students raised objections turns out to be "Teachers' Day" in the drama — subtly conveying that teachers' knowledge and authority is weakening and respect is fading.
It's been over twenty years, but during my own school years I regularly went to the faculty room to argue whether middle and final exam questions were accurate. My rough recollection is that about one in two times, the answer was accepted as multiple-choice. Since I came with various textbooks and evidence, I imagine the teachers found it quite disconcerting. At the time I didn't realize how many complications accepting a multiple correct answer created — as we see in the drama — so looking back now, those teachers who listened to me and accepted my argument were impressive.
Anyway, the Banana Incident made me reflect on how carefully teachers agonize over every question they write, and how many of the situations we only see as jokes in viral clips actually play out in real life.
3. Gangnam's Daechi-dong Private High School
My child is approaching elementary school age lately, and the question of where to live has been on my mind. When they were small, I thought it made more practical and emotional sense to live near my parents-in-law — so we settled in Gangbuk. But recently I keep noticing issues like quality of nearby schools and the school district. Even though elementary school hasn't started yet, I find two contradictory thoughts crossing: "It's too early to worry," and "They're already at the age when elementary school is coming up."
Daechi High School in Black Dog is fictional. But the connotations of "Daechi-dong" in Korean society are crystal clear. Cram schools, educational fever, Gangnam, competition, college entrance exams — the place where all of Korea's desires converge. Living or working in Gangnam, it becomes daily life, ordinary — but it's undeniably a dramatic keyword.
Several socially significant dramas have engaged with college entrance issues before. The most notable being SKY Castle, which names Seoul National University's medical school and law school without euphemism. The currently popular One Win is similar. University is the end goal, the target. Even if your brother is being arrested by police, midterms come first.
But raising a child, I've found that parental ambition has no ceiling. In my head, in my words, my wife and I tell each other that we want to let our child do what they want at their own pace — and yet we keep comparing them to other children for this reason and that. And the benchmark is set so high that seeing gifted children on television, I find myself unconsciously thinking: "they're already like that." I didn't have those advantages in my own childhood and it put pressure on me. The times, circumstances, and location have changed — but for all parents, including me, putting the ideal into practice turns out to be something we're too weak for.
Watching gifted child programs... makes me anxious.
In my case, I genuinely didn't attend any tutoring academies growing up. And every tutoring program I went to voluntarily yielded significant results. Learning Chinese characters gave me better reading comprehension than my peers. Math, which had held me back in high school, I was able to catch up on during a vacation by attending an academy. Most of what served me well was leading things I wanted to do at school, starting clubs, doing extracurricular activities. These received good evaluations and helped me get into a good university.
By today's standards, it was the extracurricular activities that worked well — but back then, nobody was systematically preparing for college through external activities and competitions, so I was fortunate. At university, students from specialized schools and Gangnam's top school district were everywhere, and I heard stories from a different world and thought, "I'm different." But now, having become a parent, I find myself wanting to impose a predetermined path on a child who's only six or seven years old, and that weighs on me.
I want to build more diverse, more enjoyable experiences together with my child. But watching the school scenes in the drama, I'm not sure whether I can hold onto that intention and resolve going forward.
4. Icarus and Hwang Bo-tong
I was in an advanced class in high school. My school was a private high school, and it combined the humanities and science tracks to form an advanced class of about 70 students. At the time I didn't think of it as special or as creating any form of discrimination. The third-year classes themselves were arranged by grades — humanities rank 1 to 40 made Class 1, science rank 1 to 40 made Class 13 (the last class), and so on. The advanced class felt like just combining those two top classes and having students study for an extra hour. The main difference I remember was that while normal students studied independently until 10 PM, the advanced class had an extra hour of instruction, ending at 11 PM.
But watching Icarus in Black Dog (the advanced class, disguised as a club) made me think differently. The mere fact of creating a special class — and having teachers give additional instruction to that class — could itself be a significant form of discrimination. In the drama, students stage two milk-throwing protest attacks on Icarus, and there are references to previous student and parent complaints and education office sanctions that led to the advanced class being abolished.
"Differentiated education" flipped around means: we're cultivating the ones with promise. That's something happening in most aspects of our society. You go to work and naturally ask whether the ROI is there, and it's perfectly natural to talk about using resources efficiently. But whether that should happen in a school setting is a different question. I now realize I had unconsciously thought "what's the problem with Icarus." Back then, there were probably students who were crushed not to get into the advanced class, and friends who resented it.
Perhaps the writer was continuously posing a question through teachers Go Ha-neul and Park Sung-soon: what should a school be? And that question becomes more concrete with the appearance of Ha-neul's second-year student, Hwang Bo-tong. Leaving aside the cliché of dropping out, Hwang Bo-tong is a genuinely ordinary male high school student. He might seem out of place at Daechi High, but the further you go from Seoul, toward non-special high schools and vocational schools, the more students like him you'll find. Everyone clearly has talent — but because schools rank ability through a handful of subjects, students who can't show that ability through those subjects have no way to demonstrate what they can do.
Student Hwang Bo-tong in the drama.
In the drama, Hwang Bo-tong's presence carries as much weight as the first two students who drove the first half of the narrative (Jin Yu-ra and Gu Jae-hyeon). And while Jin Yu-ra and Gu Jae-hyeon choose growth within the existing system, Hwang Bo-tong is the one who chooses to step outside the frame. He's somewhat different, but watching Hwang Bo-tong I was reminded of someone I used to study with before entering the workforce. Perhaps because the name is similar. That older friend, who entered the workforce a few years after me, went through several companies and eventually joined the company where I used to work. We were in different departments so I never really got to know him properly — but watching Black Dog, I thought he was probably someone who had wandered more broadly through the world and walked toward the work he actually wanted.
I hope Hwang Bo-tong too is, outside the drama, doing the webtoon work he wanted. If there's a Season 2, I'd love to see him appear — not necessarily as a successful artist, but as someone who keeps meaningfully bumping up against the world.
5. There Are Teachers, But No Masters
Teacher Park Sung-soon is formidable. At school, she's the "crazy dog" — never losing her passion for realizing her ideals as a teacher. Yet she also lets herself go with the flow of school politics to maintain a balance of forces. Even she is a mother and wife at home. That's why her husband Yeo Se-chang seems so remarkable.
Making up for the absence of a spouse at home for over ten years is no easy thing. He also has a job, and is desperate to move past the perpetual "assistant section chief" title. Yet setting aside his own career success, the care and affection he shows toward the children and the home make him clearly someone of greater character than Sung-soon herself.
One brief episode stands out: a scene where Teacher Park Sung-soon encounters a former teacher who left the profession to work at a private tutoring academy, and feels ashamed of her fake designer bag. Then comes a text message from a tutoring academy: "Looking for a teacher with experience as head of the academic guidance department." In the drama, the plot flows around a teacher not swayed by money, committed to her students. But from Park Sung-soon's perspective — feeling guilty toward her husband, guilty toward her children, saddened by the modest household income, trying to find meaning in ten-plus years of academic guidance work — none of this is easy.
For over ten years, I too did work that was in some sense public-minded, and I watched colleagues around me: some made it their calling, some took pride in it, some fell into a routine, and some just endured. Not a richer position or a more prestigious one — just wanting things to be a bit better for the family. The question "do I truly love this work?" echoed in my head countless times, and I ultimately stepped off that path.
It was a talkative world, so I heard many things after I changed jobs. Some people were sorry; some said it was a foolish decision. Many applauded the new choice. It hasn't been a year yet, but the new running shoes I've laced up don't feel entirely comfortable just yet. I'm not sure how much the image of "teacher" seen from the outside aligns with the image of the respected "master" from the past, and I'm not sure how much the work I used to do functions as clean air in society.
Perhaps Teacher Park Sung-soon will return and take on a key role and remain at the school for a long time. But will Teacher Do Yeon-woo, who does EBC lectures, stay in the classroom to the end? Can he create meaningful change from within it? Will he not be crushed by the limits of that change? No one can say. No one can fully understand another person's choice — and therefore cannot condemn it either.
6. The Absence of Romance... Like an Iced Americano
What many viewers loved and lamented about Black Dog is the absence of romance. The four-member academic guidance team — Go Ha-neul, Park Sung-soon, Do Yeon-woo, and Bae Myeong-su — displayed explosive chemistry, but no love existed within it. It's too light and bittersweet to call friendship. They share the solidarity of colleagues, but there's always some invisible line, and each one carries and endures their own private worries.
Not forcing romance between any of the characters, not coating the drama with the sugar coating of romantic comedy, is a remarkable choice. (If you were only thinking about ratings, you'd probably add at least 1-2% by doing so.) In truth, the time in our lives when we place "love" and "romance" at the center of our daily working lives is shorter than we think. I won't deny that it's a heart-fluttering, intense time — but separate from that powerful memory, life is long, and there are far too many things to worry about.
I want an iced Americano.
That's why the romance-free Black Dog feels right. Working life isn't a sweet macchiato — it's a cold iced Americano, slightly bitter.
A side note: near the end of the drama, Teacher Bae Myeong-su hands out wedding invitations to Go Ha-neul and Do Yeon-woo. The bride's name on the invitation was "Kim Na-ri." Viewers went into a frenzy searching for who Kim Na-ri was — it turned out to be a staff member's name.
7. In Closing: Please Make Black Dog Season 2
I didn't expect this review to get so long. But it was a drama I watched while genuinely thinking about my distant school days, my previous workplace, my family, and education.
As stated in the show's concept, the title Black Dog carries the message that any of us could be the black dog.
I hope dramas like this keep coming.
I'd grown weary of the constant flood of news, stimulating headlines, and exaggerated variety entertainment...
It was a long time since I'd gotten absorbed in a drama and felt something like healing.
Black Dog Season 2 — I'm holding out hope.