"The most important thing you should remember is to make sure you make time for yourself"
— Kim Mi-So
What's Wrong with Secretary Kim? is a Korean Drama which premiered in 2018. Starring Park Seo-joon as Lee Young-Joon and Park Min-Young as Kim Mi-So.
Lee Young-Joon's family runs a large company and he works as the vice-president of the company. He is smart, rich and handsome, but he is arrogant. His secretary is Kim Mi-So. She has worked for him for years and she is perfect for him, but Kim Mi-So decides to quit her job. Young-joon then decided to do whatever he can after talking to his best friend, who happens to be a board director in his company, to make sure Mi-so stays by his side.
This show provides examples of:
- Blind Date: Mi-so goes on a disastrous one in episode 3. Her date takes her to a fast-food place and then flips out when she tries to eat something off of his plate.
- Broken Bird: Young-Joon and Mi-So appears to have PTSD from a traumatic event that happened in childhood.
- Can't Live with Them, Can't Live Without Them: Mi-So toward Young-Joon as she finds his behaviour narcissistic and domineering. He lessens this behaviour as time goes on
- Can't Tie His Tie: Mi-So is the only one allowed to tie Young-Joon’s tie. During the blind date she goes to correct the tie of her date. She apologises afterward saying it is an ‘occupational hazard’.
- Childhood Marriage Promise: Mi-So and her ‘Oppa’. later revealed to be Young-Joon.
- Commonality Connection: Mi-So and Ji-Ah bond over their shared love of the author, Morpheus.
- Crazy Jealous Guy: Young-Joon is frequently jealous of those Mi-So interacts with, often interrupting conversations or giving those involved a Death Glare
- Distracted by My Own Sexy: Young-Joon is frequently distracted by his own reflection which doesn’t go unnoticed by others in the series.
- Family Disunion: The Lee brothers are often at each-other’s throats.
- Forgotten First Meeting: Mi-So and Young-Joon, as is eventually revealed, knew each other as children, and were both kidnapped and held captive by the same woman. Although only forgotten on Mi-So’s side
- Geeky Turn-On: A large part of Go Gwi-Nam’s status as a Chick Magnet stems from his workaholic tendencies.
- Green-Eyed Epiphany: Young-Joon has a particularly jealous epiphany in episode 3. Both in regards to Mi-So’s blind date and her interactions with Go Gwi-Nam at the company sport event.
- Leavethe Two Lovebirds Alone: Yoo-Sik holds Yang Cheol back from interfering when Young-Joon hurts his ankle in order to let Mi-So take care of him.
- Mr. Fanservice: Young-Joon is often shown shirtless.
- Plagued by Nightmares: Young-Joon has nightmares of his kidnapping when he was a child.
- Pop-Up Texting: A unique use of this in Episode 8. Young-joon is struggling with a text to Mi-so. The texts pop up on the screen, and then the Hangul characters are shown floating in space—and Young-joon blows them away.
- Questioning Title?: What's Wrong with Secretary Kim?
- Quitting to Get Married: One of Mi-So’s reasons to leave her position is in order to date and get married. More justified than usual, as her job with Young-joon prevents her from having any kind of private life or meeting a man.
- Romantic False Lead: Lee Sung-Yeon for Mi-so. It's perfectly obvious that he stands no shot with her.
- Romantic Wingman: Yoo-Sik is one for Young-Joon and Mi-So. He is continually offering Young-joon advice on how to court Mi-so.
- Secret Relationship: Once Mi-So and Young-Joon get together, they make a great effort to hide their relationship from the others at the office. Se-Ra and Yang Cheol’s relationship is also this (though everyone already knew)
- Sexy Secretary: Mi-so. Even before she and Young-joon become lovers, she is always wearing tight skirts and snug tops at work.
- Sexy Shirt Switch: Episode 14 begins with Mi-so making a big entrance into the bedroom wearing only Young-joon's shirt, as he stares in admiration.
- Single-Target Sexuality: Young-Joon only ever expresses interest of any kind towards Mi-So.
- Sleeping with the Boss: Mi-So worries that others will think she only kept her position in the company by sleeping with Young-Joon.
- Successful Sibling Syndrome: Sung-Yeon often feels inadequate next to his younger brother.
- You're Not My Type: One of Mi-So’s many rejections of Young-Joon is the fact that she wants someone ‘normal’ and Young-Joon (a wealthy chaebol) is far from this.
