Young Adult Matters—A searing, street‑level odyssey of two teens trying to claim their bodies and their future
Introduction
I remember the exact moment this movie hooked me: a girl gliding along the Han River on a longboard, wind in her hair, as if momentum itself were the only promise she could trust. Have you ever felt that kind of motion—where moving forward is the only way not to fall? Young Adult Matters doesn’t blink; it leans into the hard stuff that many coming‑of‑age stories soften or skip. It’s sweaty summer streets, fluorescent bowling alleys, and the kind of silence you hear in school offices where adults talk in euphemisms while kids pay the price. As I watched Se‑jin and Joo‑young scrape together money, mercy, and a plan, I kept asking myself what I would have done at eighteen with no roadmap, no health insurance coverage, and no reliable adult. It’s an intense, beautifully acted ride led by Lee Yoo‑mi and Ahn Hee‑yeon (Hani), and it’s finally easy to watch here via Viki.
Overview
Title: Young Adult Matters (어른들은 몰라요)
Year: 2021
Genre: Drama
Main Cast: Lee Yoo‑mi, Ahn Hee‑yeon (Hani), Shin Haet‑bit, Lee Hwan
Runtime: 127 minutes
Streaming Platform: Viki
Director: Lee Hwan
Overall Story
Se‑jin is eighteen, pregnant, and already exhausted by a world that keeps telling her to be quiet. School isn’t refuge—it’s another arena where power works in whispers and signatures. She’s bullied by a classmate who toggles between violence and apology, and she’s involved with Sang‑seop, the teacher’s son, who turns out to be part of the reason her future suddenly narrows. When administrators push meaningless lines like “living well is winning” and ask her to sign forms that shift responsibility away from the adults, you can feel the room’s air thinning. Have you ever been talked around instead of talked to? Se‑jin reads the subtext perfectly: nobody here is going to help.
After a tragedy that shatters what little safety she had left, Se‑jin leaves home, a bundle of shock, stubbornness, and survival instinct. On the streets she meets Joo‑young, a runaway the same age who’s already learned how to haggle for hours of shelter and minutes of respect. The bond is instant—less meet‑cute than meet‑urgent—and the girls sketch their plan with the bluntest pencil: find money fast, end the pregnancy, keep moving. Their partnership is part sisterhood, part pact, and entirely necessary. Joo‑young becomes both shield and spark, prodding Se‑jin forward when shame and fear stack up. The film frames their friendship as a lifeline, not a cure.
The first attempt to solve everything goes wrong in a way that feels terrifyingly plausible. A middle‑aged man promises “help” and instead ushers them toward a trap; it’s the oldest kind of exploitation wrapped in the newest kind of pretense. They escape thanks to blue‑haired Jae‑pil and his friend Shin‑ji, two bruised kids who’ve learned how to move through Seoul’s after‑hours without drawing a cop’s eye. Suddenly, it’s a crew of four—a tiny, makeshift family formed less by trust than by urgent need. They start calling it a “miscarriage project,” a mordant joke that lands like a bruise. Have you ever made humor your armor because nothing else was within budget?
Money is the obstacle and the antagonist. The group tries everything: a sketchy night‑club job that pays in danger, medical trials that offer cash for risk, and petty theft that never adds up to enough. These scenes sting because they’re built from everyday math—subway fares, motel hours, clinic fees—none of which is designed for teenagers outside the safety net. When the movie brushes against the bureaucracy of women’s health, you feel how access gets colder the younger and poorer you are; “mental health counseling” and “online therapy” sound like luxuries when you’re choosing between ramen and a room. The camera doesn’t sermonize, but the to‑do list of survival says everything. And through it all, Joo‑young keeps cracking jokes as if laughter were a second currency.
Between hustles, the film gifts us moments of breath. Se‑jin floats along the Han River on her longboard, the city opening like a stage set at golden hour; at night, neon bowling lanes and coin karaoke rooms glow like false havens. These are the scenes where you remember they’re kids, choreographing freedom in borrowed shoes. The colors are seductive—summer sun and hot pink signage—but the warmth never quite reaches the bones. Director Lee Hwan contrasts these bright interludes with raw, handheld chaos to make joy feel both real and precarious. Have you ever felt happiness that you couldn’t keep?
Tension builds as clinics turn them away and adults keep failing upward. A school official loves slogans; a doctor prefers policies to people; a cop treats them like noise. The girls keep recalibrating the plan: cheaper pills from a broker, faster cash from riskier work, one more night in a room with a lock. Their four‑person alliance starts to buckle under stress, jealousy, and competing needs—Jae‑pil’s impulse to protect sometimes curdles into control, while Shin‑ji toggles between big talk and small courage. The movie understands something fundamental: scarcity erodes kindness; it also reveals who you are when kindness is all you have. Meanwhile the clock—biological, bureaucratic, narrative—keeps ticking.
The sociocultural ground beneath them is shifting, too. In recent years, South Korea’s laws around abortion entered a gray zone after court rulings, but legal complexity never magically becomes access for a scared teenager without money or parental backing. The result is a maze of clinics and gatekeepers where consent forms, fees, and whispered judgments stack up like walls. Young Adult Matters places these debates at street level—who gets care, who gets turned away, and who pays in body and future. The film doesn’t tell you what to think; it shows you how it feels to ask for care and be met with shrugs. That feeling is what lingers.
After a particularly brutal run of near misses, the crew fractures. Safety becomes a series of quick calculations—who to call, where to sleep, which adult might cause the least harm. Se‑jin briefly accepts an offer from a couple who appear ready to take her in until she gives birth; their apartment is tidy, their rules clearer than the streets. It’s security, but it isn’t sanctuary. Joo‑young and Se‑jin drift apart, and that distance hurts more than any bruise. Have you ever lost the one person who made a scary city feel navigable?
The ending is devastating precisely because it’s ordinary. Se‑jin’s body, worn down by stress, substances, and the world’s indifference, gives up the pregnancy. Her transformation is subtle—new hair, new clothes, a face that has learned not to expect softness. She steps back on the longboard, and the river is still there, the path as smooth as ever, the future as unclear as always. The movie refuses to pat her on the head or punish her—it just lets her keep moving. I thought of all the teens who never make it to a counselor, a clinic, or a courtroom, and how “online therapy” sounds like a password to a room they can’t enter. She doesn’t look back.
When the credits roll, what remains is a ledger of adult failures and youth resilience. Lee Yoo‑mi and Ahn Hee‑yeon give performances that are all nerve endings—foul‑mouthed, funny, and frighteningly brave. The film’s rawness will divide viewers, but its honesty is the point; adolescence under pressure is messy, and the camera doesn’t flinch. If you’ve ever felt unseen at a moment you most needed help, you’ll recognize the desperate, ingenious ways these kids try to buy time. And if you’re an adult, you may feel the sting of the title in your chest. That sting is a call to pay attention.
Highlight Scenes / Unforgettable Moments
The Subway Breakdown: We first meet Joo‑young heaving with sobs on a subway seat, a public place where private pain has no room. The shot is unadorned and unforgiving, and it primes you for a story that refuses to look away. It’s the kind of moment that makes you wonder how many kids you’ve passed who were holding themselves together by a thread. Joo‑young’s tears aren’t a plea; they’re proof that she’s still human in a city that treats kids like static. From here on, every laugh she pulls from thin air feels like a small miracle.
The School Office and the Useless Slogans: Se‑jin sits across from adults who should know better, and the language gets syrupy: “living well is winning.” Then comes the paper that says responsibility is hers alone. The fluorescent lights hum while the adults’ empathy runs on low battery, and you can almost hear the click of a door closing on her future. Have you been in a room where help sounded like PR? This scene sets the moral temperature for the film—lukewarm at best.
The Broker’s Trap: A man promises abortion pills and instead offers danger, a scenario built from real‑world desperation. Se‑jin and Joo‑young are corralled by entitlement masquerading as assistance, and the camera catches the moment fear becomes strategy. Their ragged escape into the arms of Jae‑pil and Shin‑ji forges the movie’s central quartet. It’s not a rescue that fixes anything, but it changes the math of survival. From now on, they run in formation.
Work That Pays in Risk: Night‑club shifts and neon‑soaked bowling alleys are shot like dreamlets that keep curdling into threat. The girls chase tips and dignity and often get neither; the boys puff up with bravado they can’t afford. Director Lee Hwan uses these sequences to chart how scarcity chips away at kindness and how rules bend when rent is due. I kept thinking about how “mental health counseling” becomes a fantasy when shelter is tonight’s only priority. It’s a montage of near‑misses, each more exhausting than the last.
The Medical Trial: In a sterile clinic, the four try to turn their bodies into cash. Consent forms pile up where trust should be, and the white walls amplify every flinch. The scene isn’t played for shock as much as for emptiness—this is what the safety net looks like when you’ve fallen through it. It’s one of the few times Se‑jin looks small, and that’s saying something. You feel the unfairness down to your bones.
The Final Longboard: After the pregnancy ends, Se‑jin returns to the river with different hair and the same need to move. It’s not triumph, not defeat—just motion. The city is wide; the path is narrow; the camera lets her choose a line and ride it. I sat there thinking about how some stories end with a diploma or a wedding photo; this one ends with balance and breath. It’s perfect.
Memorable Lines
“I’m going to get rid of the baby.” – Se‑jin, saying the quiet part out loud This flat, unfussy sentence is a gut punch because there’s no adult cushioning the fall. She’s past euphemism, past waiting for permission, speaking in the plainest language she has. In a world of policies and platitudes, her bluntness sounds like honesty’s last defense. It’s also the first moment the film makes you confront the cost of inaction.
“We have to survive too, right?” – The crew’s reluctant motto It lands between apology and manifesto, the kind of line you say when you’re tired of being treated like a problem. The sentence justifies small hustles and big gambles; it’s a permission slip they write for themselves because nobody else will. Hearing kids argue for their right to exist feels both obvious and obscene—that they have to say it at all is the tragedy. It’s the movie’s thesis in ten syllables.
“Is it hard? It’ll be harder ahead.” – Se‑jin to her little sister, when tenderness has no sugar left This is one of those lines that sounds cruel until you realize it’s the truest love she can offer—no lies, no fake hope. She’s promising presence, not miracles. The way she says it makes you see the oldest child standing in a doorway, already practicing adulthood without a manual. It’s a sentence that grows heavier the more you think about it.
“Living well is winning.” – An adult slogan that solves nothing The emptiness of this line is the point; it’s what people say when they want you to move along without making a scene. In the movie, it functions like a screen saver—pleasant, pointless, and always on. Se‑jin hears it and understands that the burden is being shifted onto her shoulders again. It’s the sound of institutional abdication.
“Give me money for the abortion.” – Se‑jin, to the man who helped make the problem There’s no metaphor left to hide behind, and that’s exactly why it hits. The line slices through shame and lands on logistics: clinics cost money, and she has almost none. It’s also the moment you realize how often adults in power expect girls to solve adult‑made crises on their own. The quiet in the room after she says it is deafening.
Why It's Special
A summer night in Seoul, a longboard skimming the Han River path, and a teenager named Se-jin riding like she’s trying to outrun the weight of her world—that’s the kind of image Young Adult Matters burns into you. If you’re watching from the United States, you can stream it now on Prime Video and Apple TV, and it’s also available on platforms like Viki and, through many public libraries, Kanopy or Hoopla.
From its first scenes, the film asks a question that feels painfully universal: Have you ever felt this way—young, cornered, and convinced the grown‑ups around you don’t really see you? Writer‑director Lee Hwan doesn’t soften that question. Instead, he lets us live beside Se‑jin and the fellow runaways she meets, following them through neon karaoke rooms, after‑hours clinics, and alleyways where danger and tenderness are equally possible.
What makes Young Adult Matters special is its fierce empathy for kids who have slipped through society’s cracks. The movie’s energy is unruly—by design. Scenes swerve from raw comedy to shocking violence, from friendship to betrayal, echoing the whiplash of being 18 with no safety net. That tonal volatility isn’t chaos; it’s a mirror held up to a system where stability is a luxury, and love is improvised on the fly.
The direction is propulsive. Lee’s camera loves movement: gliding long takes, streets that feel like conveyor belts, and a rap‑infused rhythm that keeps the story sprinting. You sense the heat of August on the characters’ skin and the sticky neon of late‑night Seoul. Even when the plot pauses, the soundscape and color carry emotional momentum.
Underneath the motion, the writing keeps peeling back layers: a pregnancy that becomes a test of autonomy; friendships that double as found family; adults whose absence hurts more than their presence ever did. The dialogue is salty and unguarded, sometimes brutal, but the script reserves quiet beats where glances say more than words. Critics have noted the film’s intensity—sometimes to a fault—but that intensity is also where its honesty lives.
Have you ever watched a character make the wrong choice for the right reason? Young Adult Matters is full of those moments. It’s not about clean resolutions; it’s about the knot in your stomach when survival instincts collide with moral lines. The effect is emotionally exhausting in the way real life often is, especially when you’re young and the options all look bad.
And then there’s the genre blend: part road movie without a car, part coming‑of‑age without permission, part social thriller where the villains aren’t people so much as circumstances—poverty, indifference, inertia. The film’s rawness may divide viewers, but for many, that rawness becomes a bridge to compassion.
Popularity & Reception
Young Adult Matters premiered at the 25th Busan International Film Festival on October 24, 2020—arriving as a thunderclap in a year when Korean independent cinema was taking hard looks at youth and power. The festival embraced it not just with a slot, but with significant recognition, spotlighting Lee Hwan’s bold follow‑up to Park Hwa‑young.
The film went on to win the DGK Megabox Award at Busan, and it also took the KTH Award—firm affirmations from industry peers that this bruising portrait of runaway teens was worth championing. Those wins helped the movie travel beyond Korea and into the watchlists of international viewers who chase festival discoveries.
In the critical sphere, reactions acknowledged both power and provocation. ScreenAnarchy praised the movie’s “fresh and vibrant” style while pointing to its relentless, full‑tilt temperament; Asian Movie Pulse admired the performances even while calling the narrative “messy.” That range of response is part of the film’s mystique: love it or resist it, people kept talking.
Aggregators tell a similar story. On Rotten Tomatoes, the small but positive reviewed set reflects the split—an “intense and frequently engrossing” ride for some, a challenging endurance test for others. Either way, it’s a title cinephiles trade in recommendations, a word‑of‑mouth movie that gains new viewers every time a friend says, “You have to see this.”
The most heartening reception may be what happened for its lead. As global audiences discovered Lee Yoo‑mi through later hits, many circled back to this film and found the performance that started her trophy run: Best New Actress at the 2022 Baeksang Arts Awards, after earlier recognition at the 2021 Buil Film Awards. Those accolades didn’t just decorate a shelf—they reframed the movie as a key chapter in contemporary Korean cinema’s conversation about youth.
Cast & Fun Facts
Lee Yoo‑mi plays Se‑jin with a volatility that feels lived‑in: tough as asphalt one moment, glass‑fragile the next. She channels a teenager’s defiance without sanding down the rough edges, and it’s in those unguarded edges—the cuts, the stares, the longboard glides—that Se‑jin becomes unforgettable. Critics in Busan singled out her “brave and admirable” turn, and you’ll see why the performance rippled far beyond the festival circuit.
Her physicality is part of the role’s poetry. Lee trained to longboard for the film, and those sequences aren’t just visual flair—they’re a vocabulary of freedom. Watching Se‑jin carve through open space after claustrophobic scenes feels like a breath the movie refuses to let anyone else take for her. That commitment helped launch a streak of recognition culminating in Baeksang’s Best New Actress win.
Ahn Hee‑yeon (Hani) steps into cinema with Joo‑young, a runaway who’s street‑smart where Se‑jin is combustible. Ahn’s performance is grounded, practical, and deeply humane—she plays Joo‑young as the kind of friend who finds you in the dark, hands you food, and keeps moving so you won’t stop. It’s a remarkable big‑screen showcase for an artist many knew first from music.
There’s an electricity in the way Ahn and Lee Yoo‑mi orbit each other: sisters by circumstance, sometimes saviors, sometimes saboteurs. Even reviews that faulted the film’s excess praised how their chemistry becomes its emotional spine—two young women taking turns being the other’s last good option.
Shin Haet‑bit delivers quiet grace as Se‑jin’s younger sister, Se‑jeong. She’s in fewer scenes, but her presence lingers; the relationship sketches a private history of caretaking and hurt that explains as much about Se‑jin as any monologue. Shin’s restraint counterbalances the film’s louder beats.
In a film teeming with big emotions, Shin’s small choices—hesitations at doorframes, glances that don’t land where they should—become anchors. She represents the collateral damage of adult failures, the ones “left to cope” without a say. You feel the cost of every absence when she’s on screen.
Bang Eun‑jung threads a tricky needle as a classmate whose dynamic with Se‑jin is messy, intimate, and volatile. The character embodies the tangled knots of teenage loyalty and cruelty, and Bang plays her with unnerving realism—equal parts magnet and landmine.
Bang’s scenes underline one of the film’s most uncomfortable truths: sometimes the people who hurt us most are the ones we can’t fully let go. Her arc adds texture to the movie’s portrait of girlhood, where affection and aggression commute in the same hallway.
Finally, Lee Hwan deserves a spotlight for doing double duty—writing and directing the film while also acting as the blue‑haired Jae‑pil, a drifter who becomes part of Se‑jin’s makeshift family. His vision is unapologetically high‑voltage; love it or challenge it, he pushes form and feeling to the edge, a gamble that earned industry prizes at Busan and kept critics debating long after the credits.
Conclusion / Warm Reminders
If you gravitate toward films that don’t look away when life gets complicated, Young Adult Matters will find you. And if parts of it feel close to home, remember there’s help in the real world too—resources like online therapy and mental health counseling exist for a reason. If you’re watching from abroad or traveling, and your service catalog differs, many viewers use a VPN for streaming; always follow local laws and platform terms. However you access it, this is a movie that might not comfort you, but it will absolutely see you.
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