# Duty After School (2023)

> High school students are conscripted into the world's first war against mysterious alien spheres.

Canonical page: https://ember.film/tv/120235

## Facts

- Seasons: 1
- Episodes: 10
- Episode runtime: 70 min
- Status: Ended
- Genres: science fiction, action, drama
- Created by: Ha Il-kwon
- Network: TVING
- Cast: Kim Ki-hae, Shin Myung-sung, Shin Hyun-soo, Im Se-mi, Ahn Do-gyu, Kim Min-chul, Kim Su-gyeom, Ro Jong-hyun
- TMDB rating: 6.9/10
- IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt26672563/

## Ember's analysis

- Pacing: brisk
- Intensity: strong
- Complexity: accessible
- Violence: brutal
- Tone: tense, bleak, frantic, sincere, gritty

## What critics say

Audiences are split on this Korean alien-invasion survival drama, with some praising its high-concept premise and others faulting its thin plot and character development.

## Synopsis

Duty After School (2023) is a South Korean science fiction survival series created by Ha Il-kwon for TVING. Kim Chi-yeol (Kim Ki-hae) and Im Woo-taek (Shin Myung-sung) lead a crowd of high school students who are called into the world's first war against mysterious alien spheres that descend on the planet. Park Eun-young (Im Se-mi) and Lee Chun-ho (Shin Hyun-soo) are among the principal students whose lives are reshaped as the campus turns into a makeshift battlefield. The engine is blunt and physical: teenagers with unfamiliar weapons must hold ground, make hard calls about leadership, and survive each night while the invasion keeps escalating. Each of the ten long episodes mixes running firefights with quieter stretches of fear and grief among classmates. The show spans a single season of ten episodes, told as one continuous story rather than a case of the week. It is produced with a webtoon-derived premise and a Korean network-drama polish, in the spirit of All of Us Are Dead and Sweet Home. The tone is tense and bleak, with moments of sincere emotion amid the chaos. Viewers who enjoy teen survival thrillers and apocalyptic school stories will find its pressure and rough edges familiar.

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