General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

ONE: High School Heroes (ONE : 하이스쿨 히어로즈)

ONE: High School Heroes (ONE : 하이스쿨 히어로즈) is a South Korean action drama series released as a Wavve original on May 30, 2025, adapted from Lee Eun-jae's Kakao Webtoon ONE and following a model student who discovers a talent for fighting and forms a masked vigilante team against school bullies.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Format	Wavve original series, 8 episodes, released May 30, 2025; Korean language¹
Source material	Webtoon ONE by Lee Eun-jae, serialized on Kakao from April 5, 2019 to June 19, 2020, with over 65 million cumulative views and the 2020 Today's Comic Award¹^•²
Director	Lee Seong-tae, making his TV directing debut after the films Derailed (2016) and By Quantum Physics: A Nightlife Venture (2019)³
Lead cast	Lee Jung-ha as Kim Ui-gyeom, Kim Do-wan as Kang Yoon-ki, Kim Sang-ho as Kim Seok-tae¹
Production	Covenant Pictures; screenplay by Kim Young-eun⁴
Reception	IMDb 7.6/10 from about 1.9K votes; AsianWiki user rating 89/100 (716 votes)⁵^•¹
Rating	15 certification in South Korea; IMDb's parents guide rates its violence as severe⁶

Spoilers

Premise

Kim Ui-gyeom (Lee Jung-ha) is the top student at his school, a modest teenager who stays away from violence. At home he suffers under his father Kim Seok-tae (Kim Sang-ho), a successful businessman who appears gentle in public but administers harsh discipline to push his son toward becoming a doctor. One day Ui-gyeom's natural fighting talent erupts at school, and Kang Yoon-ki (Kim Do-wan), a classmate with quick judgment and fighting skills of his own, notices it. The two form a masked "High School Heroes" team, and Ui-gyeom begins knocking down the school's bullies one by one, while Yoon-ki, hiding his real intentions, leads him deeper into the fighting world.¹

The production press conference on May 28, 2025 framed the story as two friends who "hide a great pain in their hearts" and decide to become High School Heroes to take revenge on bullies and wrongdoers at school.² Director Lee Seong-tae said the drama follows the theme of the original webtoon and does not stop at a one-dimensional portrayal of school violence, delving into layers of violence such as domestic abuse and societal pressure that values academic achievement above all else.³

Episodes and structure

The season runs eight episodes with runtimes between 42 and 51 minutes, totaling about 6 hours 15 minutes.⁸ Episode titles trace the team's formation: episode 1 ("Workman") shows Ui-gyeom losing a cassette tape and meeting Yoon-ki; episode 4 ("Hero Mask") has the pair resolve on a "revolution"; episode 5 is the moment they name themselves the "High School Super Heroes" and begin operating in masks.⁹ In the finale, a fight between Geol-jae and Choi Ki-soo ends with Ki-soo winning and Geol-jae hospitalized; Yoon-ki is advised to stop fighting because violence leads to more violence, and Ui-gyeom's mother Da-bin takes him away from Seok-tae.¹⁰ At the end of the drama, Yoon-ki and Ui-gyeom transfer to Myomyeong High School.¹¹

Origin and adaptation

The source webtoon ONE ran on Kakao Webtoon from April 5, 2019 to June 19, 2020 and accumulated more than 65 million views, winning the 2020 Today's Comic Award.¹^•² A report from 2021, more than three years before release, described an eight-episode OTT drama based on the webtoon entering pre-production, with the webtoon's hero team delivering justice on behalf of victims of violence.⁷ The screenwriter for the series is Kim Young-eun, and production was by Covenant Pictures.⁴

At the press conference, Lee Seong-tae said he worked with the director's collaboration in mind to recreate the original's emotion without damaging the story, while allowing more flexibility in the plot than the webtoon.²

Cast

Lee Jung-ha, known for Moving, plays Kim Ui-gyeom, and Kim Do-wan plays Kang Yoon-ki; both actors took their first action drama roles in this series.¹² Kim Sang-ho plays the father Kim Seok-tae, and Kim Joo-ryung plays Myeong Da-bin; the supporting cast also includes Shin Hyun-soo as Kim Su-gyeom and Lim Seong-gyun as Kim Seung-jun.¹^•⁹

Reception and context

The series premiered into what Korean press called a boom period for school action dramas, following the successes of Weak Hero and Study Group.³^•¹² By late June 2025, Korean entertainment reporting described the drama as spreading by word of mouth after release and positioning itself as another flagship Wavve title after Weak Hero Class 1.¹³

Audience scores were solid: IMDb lists 7.6/10 from about 1.9K votes, with individual episode ratings between 8.3 and 9.6, and AsianWiki users gave 89/100.⁵^•¹ Critical reception was divided on the second half. One review called episodes 1 through 4 among the most gripping school action dramas of the year while judging episodes 5 through 8 a stumble, though it credited the character backstories with adding weight to the story.¹² Another review praised the drama's treatment of mental health, trauma, and healing beneath its revenge plot.¹¹ International viewers also noted subpar English subtitles as a barrier.¹⁰

The Korea Film Commission's 2025 catalog classifies the series under crime and action genres with a 15 age rating, produced by Covenant Pictures for Wavve.¹⁴

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › International serial drama and telenovelas › East Asian drama series › Korean contemporary drama › Thriller, crime, and mystery series › Spy and action thrillers

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 21, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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