A vice-chairman stands in front of a mirror, adjusting a tie that is already perfect, telling his reflection that he is, objectively, flawless. Then his secretary walks in and tells him she is quitting, and the smooth surface of his life cracks down the middle. That single moment is the engine of What’s Wrong with Secretary Kim (김비서가 왜 그럴까): a man who has never once had to ask for anything suddenly facing the one thing he cannot order, schedule, or delegate. He has run a billion-dollar company without breaking a sweat; he cannot run a single conversation in which she might say no.
The premise
Lee Young-joon is the brilliant, monumentally narcissistic vice-chairman of the Yumyung Group, a conglomerate where his word is law. For nine years he has relied on Kim Mi-so, a secretary so flawless she anticipates his every need before he voices it. When she abruptly resigns to start living for herself, his perfectly ordered world tips over, and he is forced to work out why he cannot simply let her go. The show plays this as comedy first: he assumes she must be in love with him, then assumes he can buy her back, then slowly realizes the problem is in his own chest. Underneath the banter, a thread from their shared childhood quietly surfaces and reframes everything we thought the relationship was. This is a glossy, dialogue-driven rom-com, light on heavy plot and almost entirely powered by the push-and-pull between its two leads. Do not come for twists; come for the slow thaw of a man who thinks he has nothing left to learn, and for the wit of a woman who has spent nine years learning to manage him.
Where to watch
The series aired on the cable network tvN from June 6 to July 26, 2018, running 16 episodes across a single, complete season. There is no second season and no cliffhanger waiting to be resolved; the story opens, complicates, and closes within those 16 hours. It was adapted from a 2013 web novel by Jung Kyung-yoon, which was later turned into a popular KakaoPage webtoon, so by the time it reached the screen the central dynamic had already been stress-tested across two formats. Internationally it streams on Netflix in many regions, though availability is region-dependent, and it has also been carried on Viki. Because there is just one season and it tells a closed story, you can start and finish it in a weekend without committing to a sprawling franchise.
The cast
Park Seo-joon plays Lee Young-joon, the vain vice-chairman whose self-regard is both the joke and, eventually, the wound; he sells the preening so completely that the cracks, when they come, actually land. Park Min-young plays Kim Mi-so, the composed, capable secretary who finally decides her own life is worth more than her boss’s calendar, and she keeps the character dry and self-possessed rather than swoony. Around them, Lee Tae-hwan plays Lee Sung-yeon, Young-joon’s older brother, whose presence carries the show’s one strand of real melancholy; Kang Ki-young plays Park Yoo-sik, a company president and Young-joon’s best friend, supplying much of the comic relief; and Pyo Ye-jin plays Kim Ji-ah, Mi-so’s youngest sister. The series was directed by Park Joon-hwa, who keeps the tone bright, the framing clean, and the pacing brisk enough that the thin plot rarely sags.
Filming locations
The most reliably attested location is CJ Blossom Park in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province, whose sleek corporate architecture stands in for the exterior of the Yumyung Group headquarters; it is a genuine, identifiable building rather than a CGI set, which makes it an easy stop for travelers who want to put themselves at the front door of the fictional conglomerate. Beyond that, K-drama travel blogs commonly cite the Grand Hyatt Seoul and the RAUM venue in Gangnam as locations for the show’s hotel and event scenes, but those attributions are fan- and travel-sourced rather than officially confirmed, so treat them as plausible leads rather than verified facts. If you want one location you can actually point to with confidence, it is the Suwon office park.
Worth your time?
Watch it if you want a clean, low-stakes entry point into the K-drama office rom-com: one tidy 16-episode arc, no exhausting subplots, and a lead pairing that became one of the most-cited duos of the 2018 era. The Park Seo-joon and Park Min-young chemistry is the whole meal, and it delivers, scene after scene, with a lightness that many heavier dramas never manage. Skip it if you need a strong plot engine, moral complexity, or anything resembling suspense; the conflicts here are gentle, the obstacles are mostly internal, and the resolution is never seriously in doubt. It is comfort television done with real polish, and, unlike a lot of comfort television, it knows exactly what it is and never overstays its welcome.
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