Visiting Filmmakers Series: Jeremy Workman with School for Defectors
Tuesday, October 20, 2026 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM EDT
Johnson Center, Cinema
Jeremy Workman will visit Mason on Oct 20. Please join us for two events.
Jeremy Workman is a documentary filmmaker praised for creating character portraits that bring you deep inside extraordinary worlds. Often cited for his focus on extreme and obsessive characters, his films make even the most singular lives feel deeply human and accessible.
His newest film, School for Defectors, tells the story of a tiny school in South Korea where all the students are North Korean defectors.
Jeremy will be on campus for two public events on October 20.
1 Masterclass: Jeremy Workman makes movie trailers.
Oct 20, 1:30pm. Location TBA.
Jeremy names his for favorite trailers, on YouTube.
2 Screening and discussion of School for Defectors.
In an industrial corner of Busan, South Korea, stands the tiny Jangdaehyun School. It is home to 20 students, all of whom are North Korean defectors. With unprecedented access to a community never seen on film, School for Defectors gives voice to young people whom the world might otherwise overlook—illuminating not just what they’ve endured, but who they are about to become. What emerges is a deeply human story of hope, youth, and possibility.
From Director Jeremy Workman (Secret Mall Apartment) and Executive Producer Daniel Dae Kim.
Jeremy Workman's documentaries have garnered significant recognition, playing at major film festivals and seeing global releases in theaters, television, and on streaming platforms. His films include Secret Mall Apartment (stream on Netflix), Lily Topples the World (stream on MAX), Deciding Vote (stream on The New Yorker), The World Before Your Feet (stream on Prime), and Magical Universe (stream on AMC+). Collectively, his documentaries have earned a 95% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, across more than 200 reviews. Workman is also hard at work on his next film, Whiz-Bang!, a madcap, chain-reaction-filled journey into the gleeful world of Rube Goldberg artists.
Our host for the evening is Dr. Young Jung. As an interdisciplinary scholar in Mason's Modern and Classical Languages, her research and teaching focus on critical cultural studies, media and reception studies, and popular narrative studies. A key theme throughout her work is that contact zones of people and cultural products illuminate the crossroads of migration, mediation, and reception. She published an ethnography, Korean Kirogi Families: Placemaking, Belonging, Mothering (Bloomsbury, 2024), exploring the dynamics of emplaced transnational families through analyses of social capital, sense of place, sense of belonging, and mothering among so-called “Korean kirogi families.”
Another recent work, “Squid Games, Transcultural Fan Parodies: Black and Queer Adaptations," analyzes fans' user-created parody texts on YouTube and their comments reflecting international fans' engagement with transcultural receptions of Squid Game. She started two concurrent projects, Squid Games: Korean Television Drama and Transcultural Fan Parodies and Mother Talks: Representations of Mothering in Korean Literature and Media, 1980s-2020s. Professor Jung teaches modern Korean literature, pop culture, and Korean cultural studies at Mason. She created the Minor in Korean Studies in 2017, the Southeastern area's first BA Concentration in Korean in 2019, and the BAM and MA in Korean in 2026.
More on School for Defectors
Read Charley Dahlgren's interview with Jeremy Workman: True/False Conversations: Coming of age at a 'School for Defectors'.
Read M.J. O'Toole's review of School for Defectors on Hammer to Nail.
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For more information: contact film@gmu.edu
