The Jonas Virus creates grotesque human beings with only their thirst for blood left. The drama gives audiences a frightening ride as any good film or TV show about surviving a zombie outbreak would do, and creates fear about an extreme vision of humanity overwhelmed in the face of primitive violence. However, the irrational attitude shown by school authorities―the principal, vice-principal and teachers―plays a decisive role in the spread of the virus. The police and other agencies that should have found a way to end the violence also react with little vigor. Authority figures portrayed in ¡°All of Us Are Dead¡± thus have no interest other than maintaining the existing system that includes the school system, a system that certifies the socialization of the future generation. Someone may be victimized due to class inequality in a classroom, and another may experience discrimination because of their school grades, while yet another may suffer from physical violence from a fellow student; however, those in power treat all of these as trivial because of their need to preserve the existing system.

The school system is surrounded by an unshakeable order: the actual conditions and imaginary relationships that exist between students, between students and the education system, between the school and society and between future and older generations. The Jonas Virus has the frightening power of putting us face-to-face with the dominant ideology that undergirds the entirety of Korean society.

French philosopher Louis Althusser divides power into two types. The first is ¡°repressive state apparatus,¡± which exists in the public sphere and exercises economic pressure; the other is ¡°ideological state apparatus,¡± which exists in the private sphere through the insertion of various values. The repressive state apparatus includes the government, military, police, courts and prisons, while the ideological state apparatus includes churches, associations, schools, media outlets, cultural enterprises and educational institutions. ¡°All of Us Are Dead¡± thus uses the nonsensical operations of one of these ideological state apparatuses―the school―to reveal the internal issues that exist between various state apparatuses. Althusser argues that in a highly developed capitalist society, schools are the most prevalent ¡°ideological state apparatuses.¡± This is the reason the drama is set at a school and portrays the lives of students and faculty there, and explains why the high school was chosen to reflect on the system that supports Korean society.

Scenes from ¡®All of Us Are Dead.¡¯

Chae Nam-ra has all the traits needed to pull the show into a Season 2. She became the head of her class thanks to her mother¡¯s excessive help, but lived her entire life devoted singularly to having the best grades in her class. After becoming a hambie, she violates the oppressive system of rules set out by the authorities and the expectations set out for future generations, showing the possibility of struggle against those very things. It is only after Chae becomes a half-zombie that she becomes the real leader among the surviving Hyosan High School students. Towards the middle of the drama, there is a scene where the surviving kids, abandoned by the authorities, gather to sing in front of a campfire on the school¡¯s roof. In this scene, the students create a temporal space where the ideology of the authorities no longer impacts them. The scene, in short, shows the possibility of the creation of an emotional community where differences in class, wealth and grades have disappeared.

In the next season, the drama¡¯s children, including Chae Nam-ra and Nam On-jo, will become third-year high school students who will have to overcome the even stronger pressures of passing Korea¡¯s university exams. Can they become a new future generation that overcomes the negative effects of the excessive environment of competition handed to them by the older generation? The final scene of this drama is for the older generation, which believes it can regulate the world at its whim while concealing the violence of contagiousness: the half-zombies are still on the school roof.