In the Korean society, the term "third grade high school student" can be represented as a single image: academic high school students desperate to enter a university or motorcycles speeding through traffic to take late students to their examination sites for the national university entrance exam. But this is not the case for third grade students of specialized high schools, who are in the middle of preparation for job interview, not the exam. The documentary film Dear My Friends is set in a classroom of a commercial high school which is the alma mater of the director. The film features students concerned about getting a job, and their daily lives.

"My brother should enter a university because he is a son,” the main character named Jinsoo says nonchalantly. She has never passed the document screening and her teacher says that it is because she is not pretty enough. Having plastic surgery on her nose, she manages to get a job but she faces another obstacle at work as a high school graduate. Still unfamiliar to wearing a tight skirt suit and high heels, the new recruit visits a university festival with her high school friends and feels foreign to the cheerful outfits and faces of other girls at her age, and its freewheeling atmosphere.

Having been raised in a patriarchal system, Jinsoo and her friends sacrifice themselves for the sake of their male siblings and readily accept appearance labor imposed on women. With regard to the discrimination against a high school graduate, she tearfully admits that she would like to graduate a university and join her company again. The audience may find the inconsistencies and irrationalities of the Korean society one by one from the image of a 20-year-old female worker without a university degree, reflected in the camera lens. No matter how sad she feels, she never get discouraged. And she is not reluctant to admit that she does not feel okay. [Eun Yu]