What’s Wrong with Secretary Kim

Everything you need to know before you hit play.

Completed 💛 Rom-Com Classic

What’s Wrong with Secretary Kim

김비서가 왜 그럴까 (Kimbiseoga Wae Geureolgga) · 2018 · South Korea

WriterBaek Sun-woo · Choi Bo-rim

DirectorPark Joon-hwa

Episodes16 eps · ~60–70 min each

⏱️ Binge Time18h 40m

AiredJun 6 – Jul 26, 2018

GenreRomance · Comedy · Drama

Content Rating15+ · Teens 15 or older

Netflix Viki Hulu

Office Romance Chaebol Webtoon Narcissistic ML Childhood Trauma

One box. Everything you need to decide.

Twelve performances — two leads with zero chemistry misfire, and a supporting cast that steals every room they walk into.

Park Seo-jun

Lee Young-joon

Lead

Park Min-young

Kim Mi-so

Lead

Lee Tae-hwan

Lee Sung-yeon

Lead

Pyo Ye-jin

Kim Ji-ah

Supporting

Kang Ki-young

Park Yoo-shik

Supporting

Kim Ye-won

Sul Ma-eum

Supporting

Hwang Bo-ra

Bong Se-ra

Supporting

Hwang Chan-sung

Go Gwi-nam

Supporting

Kim Hye-ok

Mrs. Choi

Supporting

Kang Hong-suk

Yang Cheol

Supporting

Moon Woo-jin

Young-joon (Young)

Supporting

Lee Yoo-jun

Jung Chi-in

Supporting

Spoiler-light recaps — enough to remember where you left off, nothing that ruins the ride.

EP 01

The Man Who Can’t Be Refused

June 6, 2018

Lee Young-joon has never been turned down in his life — until today. Kim Mi-so’s resignation sends him into a full spiral of disbelief, consulting everyone around him to understand why she would possibly want to leave. His schemes to keep her begin immediately, and the gap between his perception of himself and reality is already the funniest thing on television.

EP 02

The Proposal

June 7, 2018

Young-joon’s logic arrives at the most wildly misguided conclusion possible: she must be in love with him. His solution is to propose marriage — flatly and sincerely — and receive the most decisive rejection of his existence. Mi-so remains serene. Young-joon does not.

EP 03

The Blind Date

June 13, 2018

Mi-so steps into the world she put on hold for nine years and goes on a blind date. Young-joon finds out immediately and finds himself feeling something unfamiliar — and deeply inconvenient. Famous model Hong Ji-yoon appears to complicate the atmosphere further, while the supporting couple subplot begins picking up speed.

EP 04

Office Interference

June 14, 2018

Mi-so starts thinking seriously about the life she wants beyond work, while Young-joon’s campaign to remain at the center of her attention becomes increasingly persistent. A journalist poking around Yoomyung Group adds an external complication, and the public attention on the vice-chairman and his outgoing secretary begins to build.

EP 05

Closer Than Professional

June 20, 2018

Young-joon pulls out every resource to keep Mi-so in his orbit, finding excuses to see her both inside and outside the office. The line between employer and something else blurs noticeably — the warmth underneath his narcissism surfaces in moments he clearly doesn’t intend, and Mi-so is starting to notice.

EP 06

Day Off, Uninvited Guest

June 21, 2018

Mi-so takes her first day off in nine years of service. Young-joon — completely unequipped for her absence — ends up crashing it. His clueless, clumsy attempts at just spending time with her are some of the series’ best comedic moments, and the episode ends with a shift that neither of them can walk back from.

EP 07

The Wrong Brother

June 27, 2018

Mi-so grows closer to Young-joon’s older brother Sung-yeon after beginning to suspect he was the boy with her during a childhood kidnapping. Young-joon, watching them together for the first time, realizes what jealousy actually feels like — and it makes him question everything about what he thought he wanted.

EP 08

Dinner at His Place

June 28, 2018

Young-joon invites Mi-so to his home — she has been there hundreds of times, but this one is completely different, and both of them feel it. He prepares a heartfelt surprise that lands in a way none of his previous overtures did, and the episode ends with two people openly acknowledging what has been building for weeks.

EP 09

New Territory

July 4, 2018

The relationship shifts from professional to something genuinely personal, and both leads navigate the wonderful awkwardness of being in new terrain together. Meanwhile, clues about the childhood kidnapping begin pointing in a direction that complicates everything Mi-so thought she understood — and the mystery starts to feel more personal than expected.

EP 10

It Was You All Along

July 5, 2018

Mi-so, disturbed that Young-joon’s entire family seems to be protecting a secret about his past, visits his mother to find the truth. The clue she uncovers reshapes her understanding of the childhood connection she thought she had with Sung-yeon — and sends the drama into its most emotionally consequential stretch.

EP 11

What the Past Costs

July 11, 2018

The kidnapping flashback deepens as more details emerge about what really happened between Young-joon and Mi-so as children. The revelation begins reshaping how both characters understand each other, while Sung-yeon’s complicated feelings for Mi-so sharpen into a tension the drama can no longer sidestep.

EP 12

Buried and Recovered

July 12, 2018

Young-joon confronts the buried memories head-on, seeking psychiatric help to recover what he suppressed for decades. The truth about who was really with Mi-so during the kidnapping comes closer to fully surfacing — and the emotional weight of what Young-joon has been carrying all this time begins to show on Park Seo-jun’s face in the drama’s most quietly affecting performance.

EP 13

The Full Truth

July 18, 2018

The childhood mystery resolves — both Young-joon and Mi-so understand the full truth of their shared past, and the knowledge lands with real emotional weight. Their bond deepens significantly in the aftermath, but what was buried for so long creates new vulnerabilities for both, and the drama takes a brief but genuine breath before its final stretch.

EP 14

The Rumor

July 19, 2018

Rumors spread through Yoomyung Group that Mi-so advanced her career by seducing her boss, damaging her reputation on her way out the door. With her last day approaching, the emotional texture of the episode is bittersweet — a farewell to a chapter of her life, and a test of whether Young-joon will protect her the way she always protected him.

EP 15

Equal Footing

July 25, 2018

With Mi-so no longer his secretary, Young-joon must figure out how to pursue the relationship without the power dynamic that defined their nine years together. The final round of obstacles — external and emotional — arrives for both leads, while the supporting couples all accelerate toward their own resolutions. The finale is one episode away, and every thread is in position.

EP 16

Her Own Choice

July 26, 2018

Young-joon, no longer hiding behind his armour, makes a sincere and earnest commitment to Mi-so as his partner and equal. Mi-so — having fully reclaimed her identity beyond the role of “secretary” — chooses to stay in his life not out of duty or inertia, but because it is genuinely what she wants. Every couple gets a satisfying resolution, Sung-yeon finds peace with his past, and the epilogue is exactly the warm landing this drama always promised.

Full spoilers — read only after you’ve finished the series.

The truth that changes everything. The drama’s central mystery — who was really kidnapped alongside Kim Mi-so as a child — resolves in the back half of the series, and the answer reframes the entire preceding story. It was Lee Young-joon, not his brother Sung-yeon, who suffered alongside Mi-so and made a wordless promise to protect her. Young-joon had buried the memory so completely — a psychological defence against the trauma — that he genuinely didn’t know. When the full truth surfaces, it transforms his narcissism from a personality flaw into an emotional wound, and gives the romance a depth that the fluffy early episodes didn’t hint at.

Young-joon drops the armour. The finale is built around one shift: Lee Young-joon making a commitment that isn’t about control, possession, or ego. He proposes — properly, not as a scheme — and this time the proposal lands as something genuine. The man who couldn’t conceive of another person’s needs for nine years finally says, clearly and simply, that he wants Mi-so as his partner and his equal. Park Seo-jun plays the sincerity without irony and it works completely.

Mi-so chooses herself first. The series’ most underappreciated move is what it does with Kim Mi-so in the finale. She doesn’t stay because she feels obligated, or because nine years of proximity made it inevitable. She has genuinely rebuilt her sense of self across these sixteen episodes — she knows what she wants from her career, her relationships, and her life. Her choice to stay with Young-joon is her choice, made freely, which is the one thing that matters most given how thoroughly the drama’s premise was about someone who had no choices at all.

Sung-yeon lets go gracefully. Lee Sung-yeon’s arc ends with quiet dignity. He carried guilt for decades, believing he failed to protect a child he barely knew — and in the finale, understanding the truth frees him from that weight. His feelings for Mi-so dissolve not through rejection but through resolution, and his relationship with Young-joon, long strained by the secret between them, is allowed to begin healing. It’s a more emotionally complete resolution for a second lead than this genre usually delivers.

Every couple lands. The show’s supporting romantic subplots — Park Yoo-shik and Sul Ma-eum, Go Gwi-nam and Kim Ji-ah — all reach satisfying conclusions in the finale, and the drama earns its group epilogue. The final scene of Mi-so and Young-joon together is deliberately warm and unambiguous: no cliffhangers, no sequel bait, just two people who chose each other. What’s Wrong with Secretary Kim ends exactly the way it should — with the answer to the title’s question being, simply, nothing at all.

Our honest read — no spoilers, no hype.

What’s Wrong with Secretary Kim succeeds almost entirely on chemistry. There is no other explanation for why a show with a structurally problematic premise — narcissistic boss pursues the employee he’s exploited for nine years — becomes one of tvN’s most beloved rom-coms. Park Seo-jun and Park Min-young are so effortlessly watchable together that the drama’s considerable logic gaps stop mattering in real time. The comedic timing is sharp, the sound design is cartoonishly delightful, and every scene between the two leads generates exactly the electricity this genre requires. If the 2018 K-drama boom had a face, this was a large part of it.

The supporting cast is arguably the drama’s secret weapon. Kang Ki-young as Park Yoo-shik — Young-joon’s long-suffering friend — is a consistent scene-stealer, and the parallel couple plots (Yoo-shik and Ma-eum; Gwi-nam and Ji-ah) are warm and funny enough to carry whole episodes on their own. The problem arrives around the midpoint, when the childhood kidnapping subplot takes over. It’s not bad storytelling — it gives Young-joon genuine emotional depth he wouldn’t otherwise have — but the pacing slows noticeably, and the drama spends three or four episodes in a gear that isn’t its strongest. Viewers who came for the breezy office comedy may find episodes 10 through 12 a harder sell. Internal linking note: if you enjoy the office romance setup here, Marry My Husband (2024) with Park Min-young is a natural next watch — she plays a completely different kind of female lead but the audience crossover is enormous.

The finale earns its warmth completely. Mi-so’s arc is more considered than it first appears — the drama is quietly, consistently making the point that she deserves a life that belongs to her, and the ending honours that without undermining the romance. Young-joon’s growth is mostly shown rather than told, and Park Seo-jun does real work in the quieter moments of the last four episodes to make the sincerity believable. It’s comfort television made with craft: not a masterpiece, not trying to be one, but genuinely excellent at what it sets out to do.

👍👍👍 BEST FOR 👍👍👍

💛 Fans of breezy, feel-good office romance🎬 Park Seo-jun or Park Min-young stans🔁 High-rewatch-value comfort dramas

⚖️ Final Verdict

What works

•Park Seo-jun and Park Min-young’s chemistry is effortless and electric

•Supporting couple subplots (Yoo-shik + Ma-eum, Gwi-nam + Ji-ah) are genuine highlights

•Comedic timing and sound design land consistently — deeply rewatchable

•Finale delivers emotionally without undermining Mi-so’s arc

What to know first

•Childhood kidnapping subplot slows pacing considerably around episodes 10–12

•Mi-so’s identity is often defined through her relationship to Young-joon — intentional but worth knowing

•Male lead’s narcissism is played for laughs but not truly challenged until late

•16 episodes — this is a full commitment, not a quick watch

8.5 / 10Push through the kidnapping episodes — the chemistry and the finale are worth every minute.

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