“I Want to Know Your Parents”—A chilling moral thriller that asks how far adults will go to shield their children
Introduction
The first time I watched I Want to Know Your Parents, I felt the dread in my stomach before anyone said a word—because the movie understands that the scariest monster isn’t the bully in the hallway, it’s the adult who decides the truth isn’t convenient. Have you ever felt that prickle of anxiety when a system looks more interested in protecting its brand than a child’s life? I did, scene after scene, as parents in suits traded ethics for influence, and a homeroom teacher clung to a letter like a lifeline. The grief here doesn’t wail; it sits at the edge of every shot, like a mother who refuses to leave the ICU because hope is the only thing she can afford. And just when you think justice has taken root, the film asks an even harder question: what if your child is the one you need protection from? By the time the final image sinks, I was left breathless, angry, and strangely grateful—a reminder that watching a tough story can be an act of witness.
Overview
Title: I Want to Know Your Parents (니 부모 얼굴이 보고 싶다)
Year: 2022
Genre: Drama, Mystery/Thriller
Main Cast: Seol Kyung-gu, Chun Woo-hee, Moon So-ri, Oh Dal-su, Ko Chang-seok, Sung Yoo-bin, Kim Hong-pa
Runtime: 111 minutes
Streaming Platform: Currently not streaming on Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, Viki, or Kocowa in the United States (checked December 4, 2025).
Director: Kim Ji-hoon
Overall Story
At an elite international middle school, a boy named Kim Geon‑woo is found near a lake, unconscious and barely holding on. Before collapsing, he sent his homeroom teacher, Song Jeong‑wook, a letter naming four classmates who had bullied him. Those names summon four sets of parents—each powerful in their own sphere—to a quiet room where the principal speaks in hushed tones about “reputation” and “discretion.” Immediately, the air changes: this isn’t grief counseling; it’s crisis management. A lawyer, a hospital chairman, a revered former police chief’s family, and a math teacher all lean forward, thinking about damage control rather than a damaged child. The teacher clutches the letter and looks around a table where adulthood should mean accountability; instead, it means access. The film plants its flag here: in a society where networks can be stronger than laws, truth must first survive a room full of influential adults.
Two of the fathers slip into investigator mode, not to help the police but to get ahead of them. They search Geon‑woo’s dorm, steal his phone, and pay to have it unlocked off the books. On that screen, memories become evidence: videos showing the boys tormenting Geon‑woo, and messages hinting at a witness named Nam Ji‑ho. Have you ever watched grown-ups wield resources like weapons? That’s the feeling—money replacing empathy, “legal liability” replacing conscience, as hush money buys silence where mental health counseling might have saved a life. Even before the boy’s fate is sealed, the adults are already drafting their alibis. The movie knows that in high‑pressure cultures, we sometimes treat harm like a PR issue instead of a moral wound.
Geon‑woo’s mother haunts the hospital corridors, grief-struck and bewildered, while the teacher fights a loneliness only whistleblowers understand. The principal asks for the letter “for safekeeping,” an erasure couched in procedure. Parents visit their sons, not asking, “What did you do?” but “What can be proven?” Have you ever seen that subtle shift—from searching for truth to shaping it? It’s a sickness, the film suggests, not unique to one school. And in a country where private school tuition can feel like an investment in status, the adults’ impulse to protect returns on that investment—no matter the human cost.
When Geon‑woo dies, grief stops being hypothetical. Song Jeong‑wook tells the boy’s mother about the letter and faces the full weight of institutional pushback. Police inquiries stall under the shadow of influence; the “right people” make the “right calls.” That’s when the teacher hits record and speaks into the camera—choosing daylight over discretion. Her video detonates: media swarms, a new precinct takes the case, and the four boys are brought in. The first handcuffs close around Kang Han‑gyeol, the lawyer’s son, and the other parents breathe with relief that it isn’t their child—yet. It’s an arrest that feels like truth at first and later like a trap sprung by adults.
Kang Ho‑chang, a defense attorney and Han‑gyeol’s father, takes his son’s case, stepping into a courtroom where intimacy and advocacy blur. He isn’t just defending a client; he’s defending his ability to keep seeing his son as good. Witnesses are called, angles sharpened, and the messy reality of adolescent cruelty begins to separate into storylines. The convenience store owner who saw Han‑gyeol’s bruises hints at a darker hierarchy: perhaps Han‑gyeol was both bystander and victim, pressured to trade his best friend for a place in the pack. The idea lodges in the father’s heart like a splinter—love weaponized into denial. And we, watching, feel the unbearable tension between protecting your child and protecting someone else’s.
Nam Ji‑ho takes the stand, and her testimony points the finger squarely at Han‑gyeol. But Kang Ho‑chang, deeply compromised, has already recorded her earlier contradiction after she was paid off by another parent—he uses the tape to fracture the narrative. The courtroom turns into a hall of mirrors where truth, once commodified, can be repurposed by anyone with the best angle. In the ripple of gasps, a new version of events emerges: the three other boys bullied Han‑gyeol and coerced him, and he, in turn, looked away when Geon‑woo needed him most. The verdict frees Han‑gyeol and binds the others, and for a breath, you can almost believe justice has landed on its feet. Almost.
After court, Kang Ho‑chang retraces steps others skipped: the lake, a witness who pulled Geon‑woo from the water, and a stray clue about something buzzing overhead like a “big bird.” In his car sits a drone—a gift exchanged between boys—that still holds its memory. He watches the recovered footage, and the movie pulls the floor from under him: Han‑gyeol, no longer passive, confronts Geon‑woo and, in a surge of rage, shoves the moment past the point of return while screaming words that cannot be unsaid. In a single, ruinous minute, the father’s belief collapses into the only choice the movie has been daring him to make: protect his son, or protect the truth. He walks to the water and lets the drone sink, taking accountability with it. The silence that follows is the loudest sound in the film.
What makes this story feel so urgent is how ordinary each adult looks while doing the unforgivable. The hospital director uses protocols; the ex‑police chief uses relationships; the teacher‑parent uses access to the principal’s office; the lawyer uses the law. None of them begin as villains. They become complicit one calculation at a time, the way debt accrues—small decisions compounding into catastrophe. Have you ever sworn you’d never cross a line, then discovered it moves when your child is on the other side? That’s the knife this film twists, and it hurts because it’s honest.
Beyond the plot, the movie sketches a wider South Korean context—private academies after school, résumé‑building before adolescence, and families that see schooling as a lifelong competition. In that whirlwind, reputation becomes currency and young people absorb adult values with brutal precision. It’s not that America is different; we recognize the same instincts in college admissions scandals, booster‑club politics, and even home‑district favoritism. The film simply compresses those pressures into one case and asks us to watch what power does when no one’s watching. It’s the kind of story that makes you consider therapy for everyone involved and wonder how many tragedies could be prevented if schools, parents, and communities invested in mental health counseling with the same zeal they invest in test prep. And if you’ve ever asked whether love has limits, this narrative suggests that the real test is keeping your soul when your child’s future is on trial.
And then, finally, the personal ruins arrive. The teacher’s conscience costs her peace; the mother’s grief costs her breath; the father’s choice costs him the right to believe he’s good. Legal outcomes and media cycles start to fade, but the aftermath lingers: dinners eaten in silence; friendships that feel radioactive; a parent lying awake, replaying a video he can never unsee. The film doesn’t grant catharsis because real life rarely does. Instead, it leaves you with a question like a splinter: what would you have done, and what would that have made of you? That’s why the title feels like an accusation, not a curiosity—because the faces we most need to see are often our own.
Highlight Scenes / Unforgettable Moments
The Letter That Won’t Sit Still: In a dim office, Song Jeong‑wook holds a letter from Geon‑woo that names four perpetrators. The principal’s request to “file it properly” makes your skin crawl because you can feel the paper’s weight—it’s evidence and elegy at once. The parents’ eyes move from the letter to each other, and you sense an alliance forming that has nothing to do with the truth. Have you ever watched a document become a bargaining chip? This scene makes that transformation visible, and it sets the moral stakes for everything that follows.
The Stolen Phone: Two fathers break into a boy’s space and steal what he can no longer defend—his phone. Watching adults swipe through videos of cruelty, looking for angles instead of answers, is a special kind of horror. We’re used to teenagers weaponizing tech; here, it’s the parents. The sequence is a perfect portrait of modern complicity: digital footprints, cash payments, and plausible deniability. It’s also where “legal liability” starts to eclipse empathy, and the movie refuses to look away.
The ICU Slap: Geon‑woo’s mother enters the ICU and, in a moment of unbearable love, slaps her unconscious son, begging him to wake up. It sounds shocking, but in the room you understand—this is a woman trying to pull her child back to life with the only force she has left. Actor Moon So‑ri makes the moment hurt in ways dialogue can’t, and you feel the oxygen thin. The scene mirrors any parent’s worst nightmare: to spend a life protecting your child, only to find out you couldn’t protect him from other people’s children. It’s grief given a heartbeat.
The Teacher Goes Live: Tired of locked drawers and closed doors, Song Jeong‑wook records a video confession. It’s not polished—there’s no PR team—just a trembling resolve to put facts in the sunlight. The ripple is instant: reporters outside the gate, a new precinct picking up the case, a fragile hope that process might still mean something. Have you ever hit “post” knowing it might burn bridges you still need? This is whistleblowing as an act of care, and the film frames it with quiet courage.
The Courtroom Reversal: In court, narratives collide—witnesses contradict, motives mutate, and a father-lawyer presses play on a recording that detonates someone else’s story. The judge’s gavel can’t control how fast power changes hands when truth is on tape. The twist—that Han‑gyeol was coerced and brutalized too—complicates everything we think we know about victims and perpetrators. The movie doesn’t excuse him, but it explains the machinery that turns boys into bystanders and bystanders into accomplices. The verdict frees him, but the weight of what remains is heavier than any sentence.
The Drone and the Lake: The film’s final gut punch arrives without music: a father alone, watching the drone footage that shows his son crossing the line he’d insisted didn’t exist. “Die, die,” his boy screams, and the father’s face collapses into a choice that will define the rest of his life. He walks to the water and drowns the camera—an act that saves a future by burying the past. Have you ever seen love turn into self‑betrayal in a single gesture? This is that moment, and it’s unforgettable.
Memorable Lines
“When a child becomes a monster, their parents become the devil.” – Official tagline used in the film’s synopsis It sounds sensational until the movie proves how ordinary the path to monstrosity can be. The line frames the story as a study not of teenage cruelty alone, but of adult enablement. It also hints at the film’s refusal to grant clean heroes or villains; almost everyone here has a cost-benefit calculus that erodes a soul. By the end, the sentence reads less like marketing and more like an indictment.
“You’re worse than the children.” – Song Jeong‑wook, confronting a parent It’s the film’s conscience distilled to acid. She isn’t just angry; she’s naming the rot—how adults can model the very cowardice and cruelty they claim to oppose. The line also marks her turning point from teacher to whistleblower, choosing risk over complicity. It reframes the school crisis as a parenting crisis, where grown-ups must answer for the example they set.
“Die, die.” – Kang Han‑gyeol, captured on the drone The shortest line shatters the most illusions. It exposes the father’s denial and forces us to reconsider everything we’ve excused as “peer pressure.” The echo of those words makes the final act feel tragic rather than simply twisty; this isn’t clever plotting, it’s irreversible harm. And it’s why the last image feels like a confession nobody will ever hear.
“Although our film is about school bullying among kids, it’s more so about their parents.” – Seol Kyung‑gu, in an interview about the film’s focus This off‑screen reflection becomes the key to reading every on‑screen choice. The movie doesn’t chase a single villain; it interrogates a culture of protection that mutates into cover‑up. Hearing the lead actor frame the theme so plainly helps the emotional architecture snap into place. It also invites viewers—especially parents—to ask what their own lines in the sand really are.
“I don’t think this film will change the world… My small hope is that the film will become part of the motive for continuing discussion.” – Seol Kyung‑gu, on why the story matters It’s the rare “memorable line” that tells you what to do next: talk, keep talking, and refuse silence when it comes to school violence. The movie models consequences, but the quote models responsibility; it turns our viewing into a starting point, not a finish line. In the U.S., where parents juggle private school tuition, district politics, and social pressure, that discussion can include everything from prevention programs to community‑funded mental health counseling. The line lingers because it assigns homework to all of us.
Why It's Special
I Want to Know Your Parents begins with a simple, devastating premise: a boy from a prestigious middle school leaves behind a note naming the classmates who tormented him, and the adults are summoned. From the first minutes, the film tightens like a stage play, not through spectacle but through the chilling politeness of meetings where power decides what truth is worth. If you’re watching in South Korea or select Asia-Pacific regions, you can find it on Disney+; in the United States, availability varies by region and tends to rotate on digital stores, so check your preferred platform before movie night.
This is a story about parents more than children, about how status and reputation become weapons sharper than any schoolyard insult. The movie treats classrooms, corridors, and conference rooms as battlegrounds where adults negotiate away empathy. Have you ever felt this way—watching people who should know better insist that consequences are for other families?
What makes the film linger is its tone: a slow-burn moral thriller that refuses to shout. Every gesture feels loaded, every apology suspiciously rehearsed. The camera often holds longer than comfort allows, turning routine procedures into rituals of denial. You don’t see “big twists” so much as the steady unmasking of adults who will do anything to keep their kids clean, even if that means dirtying the water everyone else must drink.
The writing is adapted from Seigo Hatasawa’s play Oya no Kao ga Mitai, and you can feel the theatrical bones in the precision of the confrontations. Each scene stacks choice upon choice; each lie costs interest that someone, eventually, has to pay. That stage DNA gives the film its rhythmic heartbeat—measured, relentless, impossible to ignore.
Director Kim Ji-hoon narrows the frame to institutional spaces—an office, a teacher’s lounge, a meeting room—and ratchets up dread with clean, unfussy blocking. He’s known for large-scale genre pieces, but here he finds an even scarier arena: polite society. That choice keeps us eye-level with guilt and fear, close enough to notice the split-second hesitation before a parent chooses self-preservation over compassion.
Emotionally, the film balances grief with complicity. It asks us to sit in the silence between what the adults know and what they admit. The result is not just sorrow for a boy we barely meet; it’s a shock of recognition at how systems protect the powerful—how quickly “doing what’s best for my child” can become a license to harm someone else’s.
Genre-wise, it’s a sharp blend of social drama and procedural thriller. There are no car chases, yet your pulse spikes when a door closes, or when a parent’s phone lights up at the wrong moment. The thrills come from ethical brinkmanship—how far will they go, and what will it cost?
And then there’s the film’s devastating honesty about parenting itself. It doesn’t paint monsters; it paints people who convince themselves that love requires a cover-up. The most frightening lines are uttered calmly, with perfect posture, by people in suits who think they’re the good guys.
Popularity & Reception
When it opened in South Korea on April 27, 2022, I Want to Know Your Parents arrived after a long, complicated road to release. The film placed second at the domestic box office on opening day and drew hundreds of thousands of admissions, a respectable showing for a sober, talk-driven drama competing with bigger genre fare. Numbers aside, its real staying power came from conversations it sparked at schools, in parent chat rooms, and across news panels.
Local critics noted how the film flips the usual perspective on bullying. A Cine21 review observed that the story peers at school violence from the perpetrators’ side—or, more precisely, from the parents managing those perpetrators—and took issue with some editing choices while acknowledging the cast’s charged performances. That tension between craft nitpicks and thematic punch is a fair snapshot of the film’s reception.
Abroad, the movie didn’t roar through awards season or crash major festival lineups, but it found a niche international audience that gravitates toward morally thorny Korean dramas. As the film trickled onto streaming in select regions—Disney+ in South Korea being the key pivot—word traveled through fan communities who were already primed by the global conversation around school bullying and parental privilege.
One reason it resonated with global viewers is its universality. You don’t need to understand Korean school rankings to feel the helplessness of a teacher cornered by powerful parents, or the dizziness of a grieving mother staring down a polished lie. The cross-cultural response often sounded the same: this isn’t just about “them”; it’s about us, and the systems we quietly enable.
The backstory also colored how audiences viewed the film. Completed years earlier and delayed amid the industry’s #MeToo reckoning, its eventual release felt like a time capsule, suddenly current again as institutions worldwide reexamined how they excuse bad behavior. That history became part of the viewing experience: a film about cover-ups, delayed by a climate that was unmasking them.
Cast & Fun Facts
Sul Kyung-gu anchors the film as attorney Kang Ho-chang, a father who believes he can out-argue reality. It’s a performance of quiet corrosion: he never explodes so much as erodes, turning from principled to pragmatic in micro-steps you almost miss. His courtroom poise curdles into a boardroom strategy, and the tragedy is how ordinary that slide feels.
There’s an added thrill in seeing Sul reunite with director Kim Ji-hoon; a decade earlier he headlined Kim’s large-scale disaster hit The Tower. Back then, he raced against fire and collapsing steel; here, he’s trapped in a smaller inferno of reputation and denial. That contrast—spectacle then, moral suffocation now—underlines how Kim and Sul adapt their storytelling to different kinds of pressure.
Chun Woo-hee plays homeroom teacher Song Jeong-wook, the film’s moral barometer. Chun specializes in characters who carry secrets like a second heartbeat, and she brings that tremor to a teacher who wants to tell the truth but knows what truth costs inside a system obsessed with optics. Her scenes carry the ache of someone choosing conscience while everyone else rehearses alibis.
Watch how Chun modulates her gaze—first lowered in institutional rooms, then finally steady when she decides to speak. It’s not a hero moment staged for applause; it’s the oxygen rush of a person deciding she can live with herself tomorrow. The film gives that choice real weight, which Chun shoulders with unshowy grace.
Moon So-ri appears as the victim’s mother, and she does something miraculous: she makes grief feel both intimate and indicting. Her performance isn’t weaponized sorrow; it’s a steady weather system of pain that makes the euphemisms in the room feel obscene. When she realizes how deep the cover-up runs, her stillness becomes a rebuke to every adult who has mistaken silence for love.
Moon also turns brief screen time into a thematic spine. The movie doesn’t ask her to explain; it lets her exist, and in that quiet you feel the cost of euphemisms. She is the conscience of the film not because she preaches, but because she remembers the person everyone else is trying to forget.
Oh Dal-su portrays Do Ji-yeol, one of the most formidable parents in the room, radiating that particular brand of soft power that gets things “handled.” The performance is chilling precisely because it’s understated—smiles, nods, and phone calls that move mountains while leaving no fingerprints.
The film’s road to theaters was delayed amid the industry’s broader #MeToo moment, which lends an uneasy echo to scenes about accountability and institutional protection. That delay doesn’t define the performance on screen, but it does frame the film’s preoccupation with how reputations are guarded—and at whose expense.
Director/writer corner: Kim Ji-hoon’s shift from high-intensity spectacle (Sector 7, The Tower) to a claustrophobic moral thriller shows a filmmaker interested in how systems fail under pressure—be it fire or PR. Adapting Hatasawa’s play, he trades explosions for ethics, and the blast radius feels larger because the film detonates inside families and schools.
Conclusion / Warm Reminders
If you’re drawn to character-first thrillers that make your pulse race without raising their voice, I Want to Know Your Parents is worth seeking out today. In South Korea it’s available on Disney+, while U.S. access fluctuates; check your preferred provider or digital storefront before you press play. When you do, consider upgrading your setup for deeper immersion—great dialog-driven dramas really come alive on a solid home theater projector with crisp 4K streaming, especially if you’re comparing the best streaming services in your area for reliable bitrate. Have you ever walked out of a movie feeling seen, startled, and a little implicated? This one may do just that.
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