School 2021

One box. Everything you need to decide.

Lead and supporting cast of School 2021.

Kim Yo-han

Gong Ki-joon

Lead

Cho Yi-hyun

Jin Ji-won

Lead

Choo Young-woo

Jung Young-joo

Supporting

Hwang Bo-reum-byeol

Kang Seo-young

Supporting

Kim Kang-min

Ji Ho-sung

Supporting

Seo Hee-sun

Go Eun-bi

Supporting

Kim Nu-rim

Jong-bok

Supporting

Lee Sang-jun

Lee Jae-hyeok

Supporting

Kim Ye-ji

Jin Ji-soo

Supporting

Cha Joo-wan

Choi Tae-gang

Supporting

Lee Ha-eun

Jung Min Seo

Supporting

Ko Eun-min

Kim Young-na

Supporting

All 16 episodes — spoiler-light recaps with air dates.

EP 01

An Unreasonable Dismissal

Nov 24, 2021 · KBS2

Ki-joon’s taekwondo career ends before it truly began, forcing him into a school and a future he never planned. The first episode introduces the full student ensemble and the weight each of them already carries before the first bell rings — establishing that this is a drama about what comes after a dream collapses, not one about chasing it.

EP 02

I Ate Pasta Today

Nov 25, 2021 · KBS2

Daily school rhythms begin to reveal who these students actually are behind their assigned roles. Ji-won’s instinct for justice surfaces in the classroom, while Ki-joon’s awkward adjustment triggers the first friction between him and the people around him. Small moments, but the kind that set the emotional direction for everything ahead.

EP 03

I Thought I Knew

Dec 1, 2021 · KBS2

The cracks in first impressions begin to show. Students who seemed easy to read turn out to be carrying things no one suspected. Yeong-ju’s connection to Ki-joon starts to take shape, and the drama makes clear that understanding each other here is going to take more than proximity and goodwill.

EP 04

An Odd Combination

Dec 2, 2021 · KBS2

Unexpected pairings form and existing friendships get tested. The classroom dynamics shift as personal feelings start colliding with school hierarchies, and the first signs of romantic tension make the group’s internal politics more complicated than anyone anticipated.

EP 05

I’ll Trust You Once More

Dec 8, 2021 · KBS2

Trust becomes the episode’s central pressure point, with several characters forced to choose between protecting themselves and staying loyal to someone else. The bonds between the lead students grow stronger precisely because they’re being tested — and a few of those tests leave marks that won’t disappear quickly.

EP 06

The Hard Side of Being Young

Dec 9, 2021 · KBS2

Family expectations arrive in full force. The drama steps back from school life to show what these students return to at the end of the day — and for several of them, home is where the real pressure lives. Fear and disappointment begin to weigh more heavily than any exam or part-time job.

EP 07

The Line We Can’t Cross

Dec 15, 2021 · KBS2

Romantic tension and unresolved misunderstandings reach a sharper edge. The characters begin learning that some decisions have consequences they can’t undo with an apology, and the sense that something irreversible is approaching starts to build in every scene between the main couple.

EP 08

I Don’t Know What to Do

Dec 16, 2021 · KBS2

The mid-point crisis arrives as several students hit the wall at the same time. Plans that seemed secure start to fall apart, and the episode puts each character’s response to uncertainty under a microscope — some pull back, some push harder, and some discover they’ve been trusting the wrong people.

EP 09

We Still Have a Way to Go

Dec 22, 2021 · KBS2

A partial recovery of emotional balance, though nothing feels fully resolved. School life, part-time work, and relationships continue to pull the characters in different directions, and the episode’s most valuable quality is its refusal to pretend that problems get solved just because people want them to.

EP 10

The Thing That Hurts Most

Dec 23, 2021 · KBS2

Old pain surfaces — specifically around family and ambition, the two places where these students are most vulnerable. The drama makes its clearest statement yet that personal dreams don’t exist in a vacuum: money, status, and fear have always been there, shaping what feels possible and what doesn’t.

EP 11

I’m Not Okay

Dec 29, 2021 · KBS2

The emotional stakes finally exceed what anyone can quietly manage. Exhaustion, resentment, and fear break through the surface as conflicts that were being held at arm’s length now affect the whole group. This is the episode where the drama earns its claim to sincerity — nothing feels performed or convenient here.

EP 12

Even So, We Keep Going

Dec 30, 2021 · KBS2

The characters begin making clearer choices — not because their circumstances have improved, but because they’ve stopped waiting for perfect conditions. The episode’s theme is endurance without pretending, and its best scenes are the quiet ones where people show up for each other without making a speech about it.

EP 13

A Place to Stand

Jan 5, 2022 · KBS2

With graduation on the horizon, the students confront what comes next in the most concrete terms yet. The episode ties together their fear of leaving school — which, for all its pressures, has also been the only stable thing in some of their lives — and the terrifying freedom of choosing who to become.

EP 14

I Want to Believe

Jan 6, 2022 · KBS2

Several relationships become more honest as the characters stop managing how they’re perceived and start saying what they actually mean. Family conflicts and career plans remain unresolved, but there’s a new quality of honesty in how the leads face them — less performing stability, more choosing to try anyway.

EP 15

The Day Before the End

Jan 12, 2022 · KBS2

The penultimate episode is about everything that hasn’t been said yet and the running out of time to say it. Farewell, regret, and the fear of separation drive the major emotional decisions as the students prepare to leave this chapter behind — and the drama wisely refuses to make any of it feel clean or easy.

EP 16

Graduation Day

Jan 13, 2022 · KBS2

The finale resolves the major arcs without the false comfort of tying every thread into a bow. Ki-joon makes a decisive choice about his future — not because the answer became obvious, but because he finally stopped waiting for permission to move. Ji-won reaches a more mature understanding of her mother and herself. The whole class gathers for graduation, and the final image captures what the drama has always been about: not having it figured out, but being willing to go forward anyway.

Full spoilers ahead — everything that happens in the finale and what it all means.

Ki-joon finally chooses his own path. The finale opens with the question that has shadowed Ki-joon since the first episode: who is he now that taekwondo is no longer the answer? The pressure from his family has been relentless, framed as love but functioning as a ceiling. In the final episode, he stops waiting for a version of himself that feels ready and makes a concrete decision about his future — not the one that would satisfy everyone around him, but the one he can actually live with. It’s a quieter resolution than the drama sometimes seemed to be building toward, but it’s earned precisely because the show spent sixteen episodes showing us how much this cost him.

Ji-won stops fighting the wrong battle. Ji-won’s arc has always been about the tension between her instinct for justice and her inability to separate that instinct from personal anger — especially toward her mother. The finale resolves this not by giving her a dramatic confrontation scene or a tearful reconciliation, but by showing her arriving at a quieter understanding: her mother’s limitations are not personal failures aimed at her. Ji-won’s conflict shifts from rebellion to self-definition, which is the harder and more adult version of the same problem she’s been working through all series.

Yeong-ju and Seo-young find their own resolution. The secondary romantic storyline closes with the kind of emotional honesty the drama has always favored over grand gesture. Yeong-ju and Seo-young’s feelings for each other are acknowledged without being melodramatized, and their academic futures are left open in a way that feels true to characters who are still figuring things out. This subplot has been the drama’s quietest emotional thread, and the finale respects it by not forcing a tidy conclusion onto something that was always more ambiguous than the main romance.

Graduation as arrival, not conclusion. The final graduation scene is the drama’s real thesis statement. These students are not leaving school having solved their problems — they’re leaving having learned to face them. The camera spends time on each face in the crowd, and what the drama has understood from the beginning is that youth isn’t a problem to be solved but a condition to be survived with enough honesty and enough people beside you. School 2021 ends not with answers, but with the particular kind of courage that comes from going forward without them.