Season 5, Ep. 6: Seoul Searching

In this week's Saturday School, we revisit the 2015 film Seoul Searching, which follows a group of teenagers sent by their parents to a government-sponsored summer camp in Korea for them to reconnect with their roots. However, according to the film's prologue, this real-life program in the 1980s (which director Benson Lee himself attended as a young man) was canceled after a few years cause the kids were too much to handle.

Seoul Searching is a nod to John Hughes movies, with the Korean American characters all embodying a certain stereotype -- whether it's the punk-rock Sid Vicious wannabe, the Madonna vixen, the Korean Mexican lover, the uptight Korean German, the Korean American adoptee -- before the film really dives into deep-seeded cultural struggles that exist behind the teen angst. In that sense, the characters in Seoul Searching, including the authority figures, carry much more weight than is allowed in the world of a typical John Hughes movie (incidentally a fictional world where the only notable Asian American character is Long Duk Dong).

So go back and watch it, cause it's on Netflix, and it's fun. 80s music. Soju. Fiery romances. Stud muffins. Teary-eyed reunions. Makes us Taiwanese Americans look forward to Valerie Soe's upcoming documentary on The Love Boat, the Taiwanese American equivalent of teenagers getting sent to the homeland for cultural learning with sometimes scandalous results.