More like, what’s wrong with Vice-Chairman Lee? SPOILERS AHEAD.
What's Wrong with Secretary Kim is one of those juggernaut successes of a drama that remains popular years after it first aired in 2018, widely included in Top 10 lists and part of the 'Intro to K-Drama' primers. It's generally close to being K-Drama rom-com canon.
For this writer, this universal acclaim is baffling. The rest of this post will detail why.
The perfect beginning
'What's Wrong with Secretary Kim' begins with enormous promise. Kim Mi-so (Park Min-young) is the flawless secretary to Vice Chairman Lee Young-joon (Park Seo-joon) - always one step ahead in her tasteful heels and pencil skirts, with a swishy ponytail that says “in control, in a non-threatening way”.
Until one night, after a fancy embassy gala, she hands in her notice. As dumbfounded as her boss, we're left wondering why the perfect employee decides to quit her job with no apparent reason.
For Secretary Kim, it's not because she's unhappy and it's not because she has another job lined up - it's just time for her to take time to find out what she really wants. As a viewer, we're offered the prospect of seeing a young woman go through a journey of self-discovery while her dickhead boss falls apart at the seams. Amazing.
Except...that doesn't happen.
We will never know what is wrong with Secretary Kim
The rest of the show takes place as Secretary Kim serves out her notice. She proceeds to train up her replacement, eat a lot of meat with her sisters, and wear cute pyjamas.
However, instead of the show exploring Mi-so's motivation or discovering what her future might hold, this quickly becomes a love story. Towards the end, Mi-so decides not to quit her job after all, but by this point it's essentially an aside - we've rumbled down a different road entirely.
It's hugely disappointing, not least because not only is this an interesting premise turning into a normal love story, but the love story itself is unsatisfying in its own way. Which leads us to...
The love interest is just kind of an arsehole
When you look at this story more closely, the plot only kicks into gear not because Kim Mi-so decides to quit (this is a non-starter) but because Young-joon decides that after nine years of platonic co-working, he's actually besotted with her. The rest of the show is about his attempt to win her over.
The problem with this is that Young-joon is kind of a dick.
His level of disagreeableness is beyond the usual level of tsundere. Sure, he's an arrogant and brilliant young boss and he absolutely knows it, but this isn't your average melt-the-ice-on-the-cold-boy exercise. First of all, he's jealous:
Second of all, his relentless pursuit of Mi-so (much to her dismay) is an HR nightmare, as he routinely abuses his authority in order try to get her to return his feelings.
It would certainly take a mammoth sea-change to get the Very Reasonable Mi-so to suddenly change the way she feels about him. And so that's exactly the reason for the bizarre narrative that happens next.
If in doubt, childhood trauma
'What's Wrong with Secretary Kim' then introduces a plotline that is stunningly silly. Worth saying here that silliness is not always a negative quality - see Boys Over Flowers - but it only works when it's in the spirit of the rest of the show. Here, we've got an office romance chivvied along with a side of PTSD.
That PTSD - as is gradually revealed in a series of flashbacks - is from an incident in which both Young-joon and Mi-so were kidnapped as children by a mysterious woman, who holds them in an abandoned building before hanging herself. Upon escaping, the two children go their separate ways and never meet again - or so they think.
What emerges is that Young-joon has always known that Secretary Kim was the very same Mi-so from his memories. Mi-so, on the other hand, had no idea until an elaborate series of mistaken identities unveil that the 'oppa' who looked after her during the kidnap was actually her boss. While means now she can now fall in love with him - problem solved.
The strangest fraternal relationship since Cain and Abel
If the childhood trauma set of mistaken identities was one layer of ridiculousness, it's not the only one.
Enter: Young-joon's older brother Sung-yeon (Lee Tae-whan).
When we meet Sung-yeon, he's returning from an extended sojourn in Paris. He's a charming writer who's achieved wild success under the pseudonym 'Morpheus' (did nobody? OK then...). Mi-so scores a coup by managing to get 'Morpheus' to appear at a 'book concert', at which point he falls for her. It's awkward.
There's a lot of bad parenting that happens in dramas (you know, when kings murder their infants sons because of weird prophecies, etc) but the example here is perhaps the most bizarre. All this time, Sung-yeon has believed that he was the one kidnapped, and is wildly resentful of his little bro for abandoning him - when in fact, the exact opposite happened. Even more strangely, Young-joon has also gone along with this ruse for over twenty years, as have their parents (in an act that proves that the rich people are not to be trusted with their own child-rearing).
This is weird and uncomfortable. Normally, a ludicrous and far-fetched plotline of tangled coincidences is one of the characteristics of a K-Drama that we love, but the childhood abuse and neglectful parenting angle add up to this starting to feel dark and uneasy.
The supporting cast save this show
I wager that this show is worth watching for the antics of its supporting cast alone, and the real love story here is the one between Section Chief Bong and Secretary Yang - who I will exuberantly stan forever. Forget the 'aura' scene - the coke bottle scene is the real iconic moment of this series:
Sorry Young-joon, a real man is one who flings his blazer to the ground to cover up your chicken fillets when you've accidentally flung them out of your bra while trying to impress some other guy.
Our side plots also include one of the lads from 2PM playing an excessively frugal workaholic who gets shown how to chill out a bit by Mi-so's replacement. We love all of this.
In conclusion
Suffice it to say that 'What's Wrong with Secretary Kim' does not survive a Western feminist reading. Ironically, one of the things normally so enjoyable about K-dramas is having a Strong Female Lead who's usually fighting against traditional expectations and forging her own way - and here, we get more or less the exact opposite.
I ended the show having been thoroughly entertained but deflated - we've arrived at the end of about 20 hours and we know next to nothing about Secretary Kim apart from the fact that she's an excellent secretary. I thought this would be her story, but it very quickly emerges that it's very much not.
For a drama so immensely popular, it's not terrible to watch but hard to love. A 'break glass in case of emergency' drama when you need something with an attractive oppa in a sharp suit.