lime_pickle

The latter. More of this and less of the 'cute' and 'fluffy' please.

When she arrived at the Neon offices and started screeching like a banshee, demanding his contact details my whole stomach clenched,

I'm fascinated (though not necessarily in a positive way) by attitudes towards (a) unvarnished child abuse and (b) privacy as depicted in Korean drama. The weird Confucian thing is partly to blame for the former, I guess, but what about the latter? I should add that I lived for 6 months in rural Vietnam where personal privacy was not respected at all, but that was a 'communist' thing, which doesn't apply to South Korea.

One of the meanings of the word 'torrid' is 'full of difficulty' so while MDLs translations are often a bit crap, full of typos, etc, this one might be right.

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/torrid

Tsundere male lead
Faithful secretary/timid female lead
Pointlessly violent female lead
Drunken vomiting
Fake relationship
Forced Cohabitation
Amnesia
Screeching fangirls (over a man who runs a crappy cram school, wtf?)
Fatal illness that turns out to be not so fatal
Traumatic childhood
Orphan
Country people are decent
Corporate plotting (quite a bit of it and all over the place)
ML flashes the cash, like, LOTS
Evil, deluded SFL who everyone is friends with by the end
FL makes ML lunch. In the shape of hearts (I think I might have been sick in my mouth a bit at that point.

I agree with you. Despite my love for the ML in particular, this was wall to wall tropes, barely cemented by a wafer thin plot. I've counted just some of them below. And none of them were 'subverted' in the least.

Plus lots and lots and LOTS of product placement

Everyone gets forgiven in the end, including those who are corrupt, have attempted murder (for no discernable reason), etc

The leads were charming but the writing was a mish-mash from a rookie writer and a director largely known for crap.

Lee Jun Young has been a decent actor in some of his roles (but was also in the dreadful "A girl and her ill-fitting wig"). Loved Hye Ri in Reply 1988 but less so in MRIAG and the one about alcohol bans in Joseon. I've not seen anything by this director and the writer's name is missing entirely. So, hmmm.

Yes, I like her character in this. As you say she's a genuinely 'strong' woman. Not someone with poor self control and/or a personality disorder who screeches like a banshee and is a violent drunk (which is often how kdramas portray strong or quirky FLs).

Or even longer.

She's an escort, working for (or possibly running) an escort agency.

https://www.myntmodels.com/seoul-escort

It's basically Pretty Woman with a side of Reverse Harem. An escort is somewhat posher than a street sex worker but the idea is much the same. Of course, being kdrama these are likely to be entirely sexless arrangements (which means that you have to accept that good-looking, well off, personable men in their late 20s/early 30s live celibate lives for years) so it will be interesting to see how they handle that. A secret, mad wife in the attic? A 'real' girlfriend who's too declasse to be shown in public?

I'm really liking that they're calling out Oh In Kyung's alcoholism for what it is - I can't remember a kdrama doing that before, despite it clearly being an issue.

It's meant (like accidental kisses) to let the audience know that the woman is pure and virginal - any touching is accidental/beyond her control.

'Upload' but set in Korea?

Yes, very like San Junipero and almost a direct lift from the Amazon Prime series Upload, too.

Solyent Green is people!

Thank you.

Is it just me or does anyone else think Bonnie Tyler is going to start singing 'turn around' every time that piano music starts up?

Does anyone know what breed son/sonny is?

This is cracking stuff - the story so far is intriguing, the characters are mature, the acting is very good. One thin trope - feckless parents - but the rest is solid.