What's Wrong with Secretary Kim

A story of trauma, healing, and the journey between

I've seen a lot of bad reviews saying this series is lacking on story since there was no diabolical other woman/man, death threats, evil Mother in law, etc. but honestly it was refreshing to see the main characters growing and healing together.

From first impressions Young Joon seems to be cold and pompous but you see as the story goes why he became that way. He felt as a kid that he had to hide his trauma from not only a kidnapping but the preceding bullying that was inflicted by his brother that caused him to be kidnapped. It was implied that he was ostracized for being intellectually gifted, so instead of letting others mock him for it, he shrouds himself in a protective façade of being overly pompous. When he starts to relax around Mi So, he becomes more open and protective of her but then when he becomes nervous he will slip back behind the self protective wall of being overly pretentious. I really loved seeing him grow as a partner to her, going from "wont it be great to marry me, an amazing intelligent handsome man" to "I want to marry you, the most amazing beautiful intelligent woman, can I have that honor?"

Also seeing how the brothers guilt over what he did and how it caused him to repress the real memories and how it caused so much animosity between them. Them learning to forgive each other and regain their brotherly love was so nice to see.

Also the side couples, are the cutest. I love the awkwardness and sweet love between them.

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It’s the 21st century, let’s write better male leads

At the beginning, this drama left you questioning what was real and what was not, and kept you engaged in the story. After we find the real story of what happened in the childhood though.. the drama takes a sharp turn, the CEO was finally turning into the courageous, righteous person he was when he was younger.. until he wasn’t, and they bring back the arrogant, narcissistic speeches which become less and less funnier as the story progresses.

However, the most devastating part about the ending scenes are the female lead apologizing for things she absolutely shouldn’t be apologizing for.. first for not being sure about wanting to sleep with him, and then for taking him to the same place as the man she went on a date with ONCE.. It’s like the writers wanted us to hate this man after they wrote younger him as mature and caring, who made choices those older than him couldn’t even make (one point in case being his older brother), and giving us 1/3rd of a glimpse of what a proper male lead with that personality looked like for like a half of a second. What a shame.

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A fun representation of all of K drama classic tropes

Kim Mi Soo is a capable secretary of a narcissistic vice president of a family-owned company, Lee Young Joon. After 9 years of working diligently for him, Mi So now wants to resign to focus on her personal life & romance. But twist, Lee Young Joon actually finds her presence irreplaceable in his life.

Now, there are a few other layers of convoluted messy chilhood connections happening with the show, as expected by the K-drama formula, but I'm not going to touch on those because they could be considered as spoiler. And if you want to know a bit more about the show, you can just watch the trailer, which will give a bit more information about the plot setup than I just gave. I'm going to go right into my pros and cons briefly as I should be doing schoolwork.

Pros:
- Fun and entertaining to watch
- Very good chemistry between the leads
- Nostalgic feeling for fans of classic K-drama tropes
- Enjoyable friendships between characters, both leads and supporting

Cons:
- Forgettable characters and plot
- Lack of emotional investment
- Pacing slows down in later episodes

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Why is it so hyped???

This drama is BAD. The plot is cringy. The storyline makes no sense. The characters are bland and have 0 personality or a very stereotypical one. There is almost no character development. The male lead is narcissistic and the female lead although pretends to not take his shit, she still ends up giving in.

But my main complaint with the drama is the acting. Its just really bad over acting. Even with such great actors present, the acting is a pain to watch. They do not put in any efforts to show any genuine emotions. And all the emotions they try to show are too much. Nothing is ever subtle and is always exaggerated.

I still don't understand how this drama has received the hype it has. It is not worth it at all and is a shame as such a popular kdrama recommended by many.

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Funny drama, but loses any driving force towards the end

This had a strong start for me. I loved the characters and how funny it was at times. The plot was pretty simple and straightforward; it definitely had elements that pulled my interest and kept me watching, but around episode 12 after pretty much everything had been solved I got SO BORED. Not even my love for Seo Joon could stop my from skipping massive parts of the last few episodes, and based on what I saw during my skipping, I wasn't missing much. There's basically no plot after episode 12. Barely any conflict, which means there's nothing driving the story anymore. Anyway, a good time for a little while, but I'll likely forget about this one quickly.

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Carrying the Weight of the World!

The magic of this series actually doesn’t rest in the romance. It rests in the magic of how a little boy decides to bear the weight of the world upon his shoulders and carry that burden into adulthood.

There are many aspects of this series that we’ve seen countless times. A rich man who ends up falling in love and courting an ordinary woman. A rich man who lavishes her with bought out amusement parks, boat rides, restaurants, and so on. There is still the arcane belief that happiness lies in a relationship with a wealthy person, unfortunately, usually the man. It’s been said that money can’t buy happiness. It also can’t buy love, as true love has absolutely nothing to do with wealth.

Lee Young Joon is the Vice-Chairman and partial owner of a massive corporation. He’s also a bit of a narcissist. If you look up the true definition of a narcissist, Lee Young Joon only fills some of the boxes, but not all of them, which leads us to believe that he’s conceited and full of himself, but he’s not necessarily a narcissist in the typical sense. Yes, he’s bossy, overbearing, demanding, and he must always get his way. However, buried underneath is a man who is capable of deep feeling.

Enter, Lee Young Joon’s secretary, Mi So Kim. While Lee Young Joon is very smart and capable, it’s obvious that the person juggling and taking care of all of the balls in the air is his unwavering and loyal secretary. However, after reaching her boiling point in having to work for nine years for the self-centered Lee Young Joon, Mi So Kim decides that it is time to pursue something else, thus leaving Lee Young Joon in a quandary.

However, there is far more than meets the eye when it comes to the relationship between these two, and it’s here that the true heart of the story takes off. As children, Lee Young Joon and Mi So Kim were kidnapped by a deranged woman and kept inside an abandoned building. Cable ties were used to bind their hands and feet. Mi So, who was only five, has spent years trying to find the “mysterious” boy who not only saved her life, but also did all he could to prevent her from seeing the nightmare images from that fateful event. It's endearing and heartwarming to find a young boy who takes on that kind of responsibility.

Lee Young Joon feigns memory loss of that day, and even goes so far as to deny that he was even the boy who was with Mi So, thus opening the door for his jealous and envious brother, Lee Sung Yeon, to believe that he was the one who had been kidnapped, due to the amount of guilt their parents placed upon him. Too often, parents forget how lashing out can create deep psychological scars and even manipulate memories.

Rather than confess to Mi So that he was the one who had saved her, Lee Young Joon decides to deny it in order to prevent her from reliving that horrible past. In short, he does everything in his power to protect her, even from those memories, and we find out that Lee Young Joon hasn’t suffered any memory loss at all, but is simply bearing the brunt of it, even to the point of suffering horrible nightmares and scars. This is how we learn that Lee Young Joon is a truly noble and loving person because, just as Mi So has been looking for him since she was little, Lee Young Joon has also been looking for Mi So.

There is an absolutely adorable scene shortly after Lee Young Joon takes little Mi So home after the kidnapping, where she professes her love and even proposes marriage to him. Sometimes the most profound memories are those we have as children, and in this case, even years later, their dreams come true.

The series is essentially wrapped up by the 12th episode, and as another reviewer pointed out, the last four episodes contain mostly filler stories. One of the things that hurt the series was that too much attention was given to the romantic relationship between the co-workers. Frankly, while there were some hilarious and silly moments, I really didn’t care because I wasn’t invested in them. Anyone who has been involved in a workplace romance will readily tell you that they are a bad idea. Even the awkwardness created by the relationship between Lee Young Joon and Mi So, should be enough to give anyone pause before entertaining one.

The performances between Park Seo Joon and Park Min Young are first-rate, even if their chemistry was a bit inconsistent at times. Park Seo Joon’s crowning performance is still in “Itaewon Class,” and I felt that Park Min Young gave a better performance in “Her Private Life,” mostly because she had better chemistry with her male lead in that series.

Most of the humor is provided by Park Seo Joon as we see how silly and awkward he makes Lee Young Joon, especially when he’s praising himself or telling Mi So how great he is. He does have a few cringeworthy moments when he crashes Mi So’s vacation, or when he tries to plan out their wedding, even going so far as to pick her dress for her. His friend was correct: he’s like a bulldozer. However, it’s hard to escape Park Seo Joon’s charm, which reminds me a little bit of Michael J. Fox as Alex Keaton in “Family Ties.”

Overall, this is a good series that would have been great had they cut it to twelve episodes. However, don’t let that sway you. The last four episodes are still good, but they just don’t quite hold up compared to the rest of the series.

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Like a romance sampler - a little bit of every type of romance all in the one drama.

Just a simple romance show. Nothing special about it, but you can lose yourself in it for a few hours.

Another user mentioned that an "enjoyment" rating would be a good addition to this site. I agree. This show wasn't really good, but I enjoyed it and don't exactly regret spending 16hrs of my life on it. (Although the music became really repetitive and grating.)

The show is all over the place. Manipulation, mental health issues, trauma and phobias, hot-and-cold lovers, poor-meets-rich, first loves, exes that aren't over each other yet, secret pasts, workaholics, poor life choices... the writers sort of just grabbed a bit of everything they had in their cupboard and threw it in a pot. But every individual element was done pretty well. I especially liked the realistic portrayels of phobias and traumatic flashbacks, and the on-going effects they have on a person.

However, I wish this wasn't is a romance. It would be a hilarious show, where the rich egomaniac keeps trying to win a girls heart in order to get her to take back her job, while she just continues on with her life and shuts him down each time - without falling for his persistent harassment.

Can someone make this show, but leave out the weak willed romance?

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Story
It is a light and heart-warming drama. It is a rom-com. There is almost no plot twist in this drama and you won't have any roaller coaster mood because this drama almost never has that "sad" and "heartbreaking" moments. If you love plot twist, this drama is certainly not for you. And as a drama goes on, we will see mostly romantic scene. The story isn't what the author focus on. Sometimes this becomes a huge problem, because it made the drama boring to watch

Acting/Cast
This drama is led by superstar actor and actress, whom they are Park Seo Joon and Park Min Young. They definetely did a great job of potraying their character. Their chemistry is certainly great, looking by the fact, there are rumors that they already "date". But, I would like to say, Park Min Young did some unnatural gestures. Park Seo Joon really did a great job I would say, but sometimes, I felt weird watching him as the character.

Music
The osts were good, I love one of them, but that's it. The music mainly didn't affect our (or mine?) emotion of watching the drama.

Rewatch value
I mostly rewatch the drama for its sweet moment, but not only for it. The story is a bit boring, so I might hesitate to rewatch it.

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Too boring to watch

I have no idea why this show has so many good reviews and a high rating. It is such a boring, plain and exhaustingly simple "helpless girl" x "strong dominant boy". Why not make a show where the CEO is a woman and the man is her assistant? I'm not complaining because it is "misogynistic" or "misandrist", but I am complaining because it's exhausting to watch... We are already used to seeing small, tiny and frail women and strong men everywhere. We watch TV to escape daily life and reality. It is your job to give us a fun escape like "Princess, you have 5 husbands" kind of funny. We want to see something like that. A secretary and her boss are male fantasy, which you can find on certain websites dedicated to male fantasy and other disgusting videos.

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In a quick summary, this drama is now my favorite rom-com of all time (topped i am not a robot, and weightlifting fairy). It's filled with clichés but it didn't make me love it any less. It had cringy moments, it had forced interactions between the characters (especially with the psycho brother), but it isn't even close to the fluff, the laughs, and the feel-good moments this show brought me.


Story 8/10
This is the weakest part of the drama. It started out really strong; it showed us a female lead who isn't a pushover and made lots of sacrifices by taking the burden of her family. It also showed us a seemingly rude looking boss, but it actually turned out to be a really naive, and cute boy inside (albeit narcissistic). Their relationship was super natural and the development to romance was perfect; burning chemistry. The issue for me started when they expounded more and more of the flashbacks. They just had to insert that cliché that every couple in a drama is star-crossed lovers hahaha. They could've made the story without any flashbacks, and this would have been rated higher. All those flashbacks were cringy. I liked the concept of a psycho brother fighting with Young Joon, but his interactions with Mi So were just not right. It seemed off. Every bit of it. Apart from that, the story was good again. It showed different supporting characters' interactions within the office, Mi So's sisters, and they honestly all made me laugh and smile every time. I do agree with the criticism that the overall story regressed as it went on; it started out scorching hot but it became stagnant after episode 11 and it didn't improve form there, they just maintained it and that's why it felt dragging to some and bad to others.

Acting 9.5/10
This would have a 10 if only everyone fitted nicely. Everyone in this drama was on fire in terms of acting except Lee Tae Hwan. He's definitely the odd man out in is great cast. He's good in acting, but just doesn't have any chemistry with the rest. Even the guest stars had better chemistry with the cast than him. All had good interactions among each other. If I were to choose a character relationship that isn't PMY and PSJ that is overflowing with CHEMISTRY, it's PSJ and Kang Ki Young. Every time they have scenes together, I make sure I don't eat cause I'm pretty sure I will be choking when I laugh out loud while eating. Every supporting character was awesome in this drama, especially Pyo Ye Jin (give her some lead roles now) and Kang Ki Young (and him too)

And to state the obvious, pmy and psj were super in-sync. They acted so naturally; good when they are a couple, but on fire when they play vice-chairman and secretary. I disagree with the comments that they didn't look natural with the romance. They absolutely did and I wish they did date in real life. The chemistry between them is on par with Lee Jong Suk-Han Hyo Joo or Park Bo Young-Park Hyun Sik. Definitely a must watch for that reason alone

Music 9/10
The music was avtually really average. They a lot of good songs, but no great somgs at all. Great for me is when a song makes you listen to it outside of the show, without any knowledge or reference to the drama. Howeverm I'm giving this a 9 because of the special effects/sounds that they use that adds so much more laughter to the conversations. I loved the Cow sounds when hardworking cow is showed, or the sound that flashes when PMY glares at PSJ, or the hysterical music that plays when the driver rescues Bong Se Ra from embarassment. Those were unique, and awesome at the same time funny.

Rewatch value 10/10
I like legal dramas. I'm starting to like melodramas. But i'm not some saddistic fucker who only watches heart wrenching dramas or intense dramas. I need feel-good shows too and this show is the best representation for it. Even with the cliches and the cringy flashbacks, I would still rewatch this any day.

Overall
This is a drama that didn't have a special story or kick to it, but was rescued by a really good cast, with two awesome leads, and really unique sound effects. I understand where the criticism from this drama is coming from, however, I don't think it's enough for this show to be labeled average or bad. This is one of the best dramas of 2018, posisbly the best rom-com. If you haven't watched it, give it a try. If I took a shot of soju for every time this show made me laugh, I would be puking for a month.

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