General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

My Boss, My Hero (두사부일체)

My Boss, My Hero (두사부일체, Du-sa-boo-il-che) is a 2001 South Korean gangster action-comedy film directed by Yoon Je-kyun (윤제균) in which a rising mob boss is sent back to high school to earn the diploma he needs for promotion within his organization.¹^•² The title plays on the Korean phrase gun-sa-bu-il-che (군사부일체), which holds that ruler, teacher, and father should be regarded as one, replacing the first element with "boss" to fit the premise of a crime boss entering a school.³

Key fact	Detail
Original title	두사부일체 (Du-sa-boo-il-che), romanized also as Doosabooilchae¹
Director and writers	Yoon Je-kyun (director and co-writer, with Kim Yun-hui); his feature debut²^•³
Release	December 2001 in South Korea; 98 minutes; rated 19 (청소년 관람불가, not for minors)¹^•⁴
Lead cast	Jung Joon-ho as Gye Du-sik, Jung Woong-in as Kim Sang-du, Jung Woon-taek as Daegari, Oh Seung-eun as Lee Yun-ju⁴
Box office	3,302,000 admissions nationwide (1,229,100 in Seoul) per one year-end tally; about 3.5 million per a later retrospective report⁵^•³
Series	First film of a trilogy, followed by Two Bosses, One Body (투사부일체, 2006) and Sangsabu Ilche (상사부일체, 2007)³
Adaptation	A Japanese television drama version aired on Nippon TV from June 8 to October 16, 2006⁶

Spoilers

Plot and premise

Gye Du-sik (정준호, Jung Joon-ho) is the boss of the Yeongdong gang, a rising figure in the Korean underworld who has gotten by for ten years on his wits and bare knuckles. After taking over the Myeongdong territory he attends his first meeting with the organization's leadership, where talk of the internet, IP, and KOSDAQ leaves him unable to follow the discussion. His superior orders him to obtain a high school graduation certificate before he can be promoted.¹^•⁴^•³

With help from his subordinates Kim Sang-du (Jung Woong-in) and Daegari (Jung Woon-taek), who sell two bars in their territory to fund a donation-based admission to a private high school, Du-sik enrolls. He intends to graduate quietly, but the school itself is out of control: he faces intimidation from a high-school hoodlum, a willful young student whose powerful parents indulge her every wish, and school authorities who cut corners. He also grows close to his deskmate Lee Yun-ju (Oh Seung-eun). When he has had enough, he sets out to avenge the wrongdoings of a corrupt school system, confronting the abusive adults on the students' behalf.¹^•⁴^•³

The supporting cast includes Song Sun-mi as a teacher, Park Jun-gyu as teacher Jo Bong-pal, Yun Mun-sik as the vice principal, and Ki Joo-bong as the chairman of the school board.⁴

Sequels and legal dispute

The film's success produced a trilogy. Two Bosses, One Body (투사부일체), directed by Kim Dong-won and released on January 19, 2006, returned Jung Joon-ho, Jung Woong-in, and Jung Woon-taek, added Kim Sang-joong and Han Hyo-joo, and lowered the rating to 15 and up; it drew 1.66 million admissions in its first weekend and more than 6.1 million in total. The third film, Sangsabu Ilche (상사부일체), directed by Shim Seung-bo and released in September 2007 for the Chuseok season, moved the setting from school to a corporation, with Lee Sung-jae replacing Jung Joon-ho as Du-sik, who joins a large company and rises in insurance sales while confronting corporate corruption.³

The sequel also produced litigation. In 2005, E-Korea Investments, an investor in the 2001 original, sued the sequel's production company Cinema Zenith in the Seoul Central District Court, claiming that Two Bosses, One Body infringed its copyright in the original film.⁹

Release and box office

Sources give the Korean release date as December 8, 2001⁵ or December 14, 2001⁴. The film sold 3,302,000 tickets nationwide, of which 1,229,100 were in Seoul, ranking sixth among Korean films of 2001 and ninth among all films released that year in Korea.⁵ A 2026 retrospective places its total at about 3.5 million admissions despite the adults-only rating.³

Context of 2001. The film arrived in a year when gangster comedies dominated the Korean box office: Friend drew over 8 million admissions, My Sassy Girl and Kick the Moon each passed 4 million, My Wife is a Gangster sold more than 5 million tickets, and Hi, Dharma reached 3.7 million. My Boss, My Hero joined this group as one of the year's top-grossing Korean films.⁵ Critics of the period grouped it with Kick the Moon, My Wife is a Gangster, and Hi, Dharma! as a quartet of 2001 gangster comedies that many reviewers considered a regression in Korean cinema, even while the films found large audiences.⁷ Park Joon-gyu received the Netizen Popular Actor Award at the 2002 Golden Cinematography Awards for his performance.⁸ The film was later screened in the Korean and Chinese Film Festa section of the Focus on Asia, Fukuoka International Film Festival in 2005.¹

Adaptation and later availability

The premise was remade for Japanese television as a drama series broadcast on the Nippon TV Network from June 8 to October 16, 2006.⁶

For director Yoon Je-kyun, the film was a 2001 debut that led to Sex Is Zero (2002), Romantic Warriors (2003), and later the large-scale hits Haeundae and Ode to My Father (International Market), which made him one of Korea's commercially successful directors.³^•¹⁰ Ahead of the film's 25th anniversary, My Boss, My Hero was released on Netflix on the 18th of the month in 2026, returning the adults-rated comedy to streaming availability.³

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026