This study investigates how South Korean students perceive migrants by interviewing 21 ethnic Korean adolescents. This study shows the parallel of popular discourse with Korean students' discourse on migrants. Similar to competing popular discourse, half of the students in this study relied on the humanitarian discourse, depicting migrants as victims, fellow humans, and contributors while another half of the students showed the anti-multicultural discourse, portraying migrants as beneficiaries, competitors, and troublemakers. In contrast to the strong influence of the media on Korean students' ideas, school learning was the least meaningful source of information when the students learned about migrant-related issues. These findings illustrate the greater influence of societal discourses on students' understandings of migrants compared to the official school curriculum. This paper suggests that educators need to address prevailing societal discourses surrounding students more directly in the classroom to encourage students to participate in the meaningful conversation about immigration issues.