Good vs. Evil and the Limits of Empathy in K-Pop Demon Hunters

By Elizaveta Friesem

Narratives of good and evil are everywhere. They run deep in human storytelling, from ancient myths and fairy tales to modern movies and news headlines. We seem drawn to stories that divide the world into heroes and villains. The appeal is obvious: such narratives make moral dilemmas, which abound in our lives, easier to process.

Yet this clarity comes at a cost. By simplifying people into categories of good and bad, these stories obscure the complexity of motives, causes, and relationships. When we see the world this way, it becomes harder to resolve conflicts—whether in society or in our personal lives—because we stop asking what drives people and start treating “badness” as a complete explanation. It also makes self-reflection harder: if we reserve moral ambiguity for “them,” we are less likely to notice our own mixed motives, rationalizations, and capacity to cause harm.

Media literacy educators have long examined how stereotypes, misinformation, and ideology shape our understanding of the world. But the deeper narrative structure—the good-versus-evil moral binary that underpins so much storytelling—often goes unquestioned. This essay offers one concrete way to address that gap by briefly analyzing a widely watched media text, K-Pop Demon Hunters (KPDH), with a simple lesson-plan sketch at the end.

KPDH, released on Netflix in 2025, follows Huntr/x, a K-pop girl group with a secret second job: they hunt demons who threaten the human world. Their newest challenge comes in the form of a rival boy band whose members are demons in disguise. On the surface, KPDH follows a familiar template: heroes fight monsters to save the world. But beneath the spectacle, the story flirts with a more complex idea—that the demons might not be pure evil after all. The film spends significant time inviting us to understand the enemy, tracing the protagonist Rumi’s growing empathy and doubt. Yet in the end, KPDH retreats into the comfort of the very binary it seemed ready to transcend.

Throughout the film, Rumi, who is half-demon and half-human, struggles to accept her demon side. When she meets Jinwoo, a demon who insists that his kind feel emotions and are ruled by shame, the story opens a door to empathy (39:25–41:50). The suggestion is profound: if demons can feel shame, then they are not simply monsters to be destroyed but beings capable of suffering. This realization begins to unsettle Rumi’s worldview. She wrestles with it —questioning the hatred embedded even in her group’s music. When her friends start working on a new song, Take Down, celebrating the annihilation of demons, she objects to the violent and hateful lyrics: why sing about destruction if demons, too, can feel (46:42–48:50 and 52:00–52:50)? In one particular fight scene, she hesitates before killing a generic demon. But before she can act on that hesitation, her friend intervenes, and the demon is slain (43:10–43:24).

Despite the suggestion that all demons have feelings, empathy remains confined to Jinwoo, the only one given real depth and inner life. He becomes the sole demon figure that audiences are encouraged to see as more than monstrous (e.g., the song Free, especially Jinwoo’s part)—even as later revelations expose the deeper layers of his betrayal (1:00:10–1:01:00). His tiger and bird companions, while technically from the demon realm, serve mostly as comic or emotional relief rather than moral counterpoints. Every other demon remains metaphorically faceless—an indistinguishable threat to be destroyed. In the aforementioned scene where Rumi hesitates before killing a demon—and even asks the demon with concern in her voice, “Are you a prisoner too?”—the demon is portrayed as malicious (43:10–43:24). Notably, in another scene, when Rumi hesitates again, this time during a fight on top of a moving train, she and her team learn that these doubts have cost multiple people their souls/lives (53:18–54:50).

After watching the film, one might wonder whether the revelation that demons feel shame and emotion exists less to redeem them than to redeem Rumi herself. The idea that “even demons have feelings” ultimately functions to make her acceptance of her own demonic side more palatable, not to expand empathy toward the enemy. Her journey becomes one of self-reconciliation rather than a true moral reimagining of good and evil. What could have been the film’s moral pivot—an invitation to question what it means to understand the “enemy”—is absorbed back into the familiar logic: the villain must be defeated, the world set right, and the heroine reconciled with herself. Jinwoo’s brief redemption, culminating in self-sacrifice, adds emotional weight but not moral transformation (1:20:53–1:22:16). The rest of the demons remain faceless (metaphorically and in some fight scenes literally, see 53:18–54:50), their destruction unproblematic.

KPDH offers plenty to unpack in a media literacy classroom. It raises questions about gender, fame, body image, and cultural hybridity, but it also opens a deeper conversation about storytelling itself. The film shows how a popular narrative can flirt with moral complexity, even gesture toward empathy with the “enemy,” only to retreat into familiar patterns. In some ways, this kind of flirtation may be more troubling than a straightforward good-versus-evil story. When a film raises the possibility of empathy—then drops it—the audience may walk away with the comfort of having “considered” complexity, even as the narrative ultimately endorses the same dehumanizing logic it briefly questioned.

Exploring this tension can help students see how popular stories contribute to the persistence of moral binaries. Students can then discuss why this happens. A big part of the answer lies in narrative economy. A 100-minute animated musical must juggle world-building, spectacle, and character arcs; there’s limited room for philosophical nuance without losing pace or clarity. Genre expectations play an equally powerful role: blockbusters thrive on decisive stakes and emotional payoff.

The point is not to blame media producers for creating texts that hint at complexity but at the end fail to provide it. Audiences usually expect the triumph of good over evil, and studios rely on that recognition to ensure mass appeal. After all, popular media narratives are designed to be commercially successful, and the logic of media economy must always be taken into account. So another thing that students can explore is why many people find the moral binary so appealing.

(Self)reflection is an important aspect of media literacy education. Starting with KPDH as an example of moral clarity, students can be encouraged to explore why such stories remain popular. Why are we so often attracted to narratives that offer moral coherence and catharsis? And why are we not concerned when stories discourage us from feeling empathy toward the “bad other”? Indeed, why does it feel so obvious to believe that some people deserve compassion while others don’t? Why is this conviction so hard to challenge? And how might challenging the moral binary—both in media texts produced by others and in texts we produce ourselves (including “simple” texts such as comments on social media)—help us resolve social and personal conflicts?

Exploring these questions with students can be eye-opening, but it can also be emotionally charged and difficult to navigate. The very reason such narratives persist is that they meet deep psychological needs. For many people, the idea that “some individuals are simply bad” feels stabilizing. It makes moral judgment possible and provides a sense of safety in a chaotic world. To question that premise can feel threatening, as if compassion for those we label “bad” risks condoning harm or erasing accountability.

This resistance has its own internal logic, grounded in lived experience and in a moral intuition that seeks to reduce suffering. For that reason, educators should approach these conversations with empathy and patience, not confrontation. The goal is not to dismantle students’ beliefs in one session, but to plant a seed of curiosity. What lies beneath our need for clear moral boundaries? What might a different moral imagination look like—one that acknowledges complexity without denying harm? What practical benefits might come from thinking this way—especially when we’re trying to understand or resolve conflict?

Moral binaries matter in media literacy not because the classroom should deliver moral verdicts, but because “good vs. evil” is a powerful narrative shortcut that appears across media forms—and quietly trains audiences to read the world in certain ways. K-Pop Demon Hunters offers a clear example: it raises the possibility of empathy and complexity, then resolves the story through familiar oppositions and a satisfying restoration of order. Analyzing that pattern helps students develop interpretive maturity: learning to identify how texts distribute empathy, explain (or refuse to explain) motives, and normalize particular ways of handling conflict. And because students are not only consumers but also participants in media culture, this analysis can extend to their own practices—how quickly moral certainty takes over in posts, captions, and comment threads, and what it would mean to communicate with more care. In other words, media literacy can sharpen students’ awareness of moral binaries in popular narratives while also strengthening their sense of responsibility as ethical participants in public life.

To download the full lesson plan: Good vs. Evil and the Limits of Empathy in K-Pop Demon Hunters