What's Wrong with Secretary Kim Review: Vanity on Notice

Is What’s Wrong with Secretary Kim worth watching?

Yes. What’s Wrong with Secretary Kim is a light, glossy and genuinely funny workplace romance, and Park Seo-joon and Park Min-young sell its clichés with so much charm that they feel fresh again. Park Seo-joon’s self-adoring executive is one of the great comic creations of 2010s K-drama. The reservations are that the story leans on well-worn office-romance tropes, and a late turn toward childhood trauma sits awkwardly against the bubbly comedy.

What is What’s Wrong with Secretary Kim about?

For nine years, Kim Mi-so (Park Min-young) has been the flawless secretary to Lee Young-joon (Park Seo-joon), the vice-president of his family’s conglomerate and a man convinced of his own perfection. She anticipates his every whim and absorbs his vanity with a professional smile. Then she hands in her resignation, explaining that after years of putting everyone else first, she would like a life of her own.

Young-joon cannot conceive that anyone would want to leave him, and sets out to keep her by any means he can think of, including the unthinkable one of romance. As they spend more time together outside the office, a shared memory from childhood begins to surface. Lee Tae-hwan plays a celebrated novelist with ties to Young-joon, and Kang Ki-young plays Young-joon’s long-suffering best friend.

What’s Wrong with Secretary Kim was adapted from a popular Korean web novel and its webtoon, and written for television by Jung Eun-young. It is a South Korean series in Korean that aired on tvN in 2018. This review covers the complete show, a single season of 16 episodes.

Park Seo-joon plays narcissism as comedy gold

The show’s engine is a performance that could have been insufferable. Park Seo-joon plays Young-joon as a man who genuinely believes the world is lucky to have him, admiring his reflection, speaking about himself with serene confidence and treating ordinary emotions as puzzling foreign customs. He commits so fully to the vanity that the character becomes lovable, and the gradual cracks in the armour are both funny and touching.

Park Min-young is the perfect foil. Mi-so is composed, efficient and quietly amused, and Park lets the audience see how much practised patience sits behind her polished calm. Their scenes together have a crisp screwball rhythm, and the romance works because she is clearly the more capable of the two.

Office comedy with a generous ensemble

The supporting cast turns the company into a sitcom in its own right. The secretarial team and office staff get their own romances and running jokes, and Kang Ki-young is especially funny as the friend who has spent years putting up with Young-joon’s ego. The production is bright and polished, full of luxury interiors and fashion, and the lightweight tone makes the early and middle episodes very easy to binge.

Tropes and a darker turn

The show is not interested in questioning the power imbalance at its heart. A boss pursuing his secretary, grand gestures that edge into pressure, and a chaebol fantasy of wealth solving most problems are all played straight, and some viewers will find that dated. The bigger issue is tonal. The later episodes shift weight toward the childhood mystery and its lingering trauma, and that thread brings in a heavier kind of melodrama that the comedy never fully absorbs. The leads remain charming throughout, but the sparkle dims a little.

Who should watch What’s Wrong with Secretary Kim?

It suits viewers who love romantic comedies, chaebol fantasies and big-star pairings, and it works well as an entry point to the office-romance strand of K-drama. The 16 episodes move quickly. Content is mostly light, with kissing scenes and comic bickering, though the later storyline touches on childhood trauma and phobias.

Where to go next:

• Queen of Tears for a bigger, more emotional chaebol romance that also mixes comedy with melodrama.
• Because This Is My First Life for a more grown-up romcom about work, money and independence.
• Itaewon Class for Park Seo-joon in a very different role, as a stubborn young entrepreneur.

The verdict

What’s Wrong with Secretary Kim is a fizzy office romcom that lives and breathes on the chemistry of its two leads, with Park Seo-joon’s vain, oblivious executive a genuine comic highlight. The tropes are old and the late turn to trauma feels heavy, but it remains a delightful, easy watch.

Rating: 4/5