Be My Secretary! – The Beautiful Working Women of K-Dramas

Korean dramas are littered with beautiful Korean people.  I get k-crushes on quite a few of them… Ko Soo, Kim Na Gil, Ha Ji Won, Yun Jung Hoon, Jun Ji Hyun, Yang Dong Geun, and so on.  But sometimes they’re so awesome they seem untouchable.  Even a harmless crush might stain their flawless veneer.  They should be admired… like a work of art.  Look but don’t touch, people!

So let us take a moment to admire one of my favorite side characters:  The Secretary.  Yes, I can’t even say the word secretary without thinking of that deliciously pervy movie with James Spader or the outrageous bombshell figure of the red head from Mad Men.  But those secretaries were touchable… and were touched quite often on screen, if memory serves (it does, and so does my rewind button).  The Secretaries we’re discussing here are the idols of Korean work life.  You can worship them unclothed if you like, but they will not be moved.  They have ascended to a higher plain of existence… where they can steal all our attention away from the female leads without batting an eyelash.

Who are these killer coworkers?  Let us explore…

Every so often I come across one of these absolutely stunning working women… be they secretaries or coworkers or presidents or managers.  Wow.  Talk about incentive to get to work every morning.  If you’ve seen Lie To Me, you probably noticed the extremely hot secretary lurking in the shadows of our male lead.  It was hard to miss her.  She seemed ten times cooler than the female lead but thankfully didn’t get entangled in a love-triangle… cause let’s face it, she was ten times cooler than the male lead too.  These working ladies always know what’s really going on in the dramas.  They know all, they see all.  They’re goddesses amongst mortals.

Park Ji-Yoon played the secretary in Lie to Me.

Seriously, I would be asking her out for drinks every night… and thankfully, in Korea that’s perfectly acceptable behavior.

In The Greatest Love, all my love went to the fabulous president of the talent management agency, Choi Hwa Jung.

Noona!  Someone find me a talent so I could sign my life away to this beautiful creature.  I like to think of her as the Korean Tilly… the long lost sister of Meg Tilly and Jennifer Tilly.  You don’t see it?  Wait…

  

Meg Tilly.  Jennifer Tilly.  Korean Tilly.  See it now?

In Shark… I think they’ve taken the hot secretary business to the next level.  I mean… where did they find this woman?  Oh yeah.  She’s Miss Korea.  Seriously.  Lee Ha Nui was Miss Korea… and now she’s strutting around the office with her hourglass figure and winning dimples.  Whenever she’s in the frame, all other women turn into homely rag dolls.  Our female lead looks like she bathes in dirty dish water when compared to this woman.  And again… no love triangle!  No need for it.  There are hints that Miss Korea Secretary has a crush on the male lead, but it also seems like benevolent concern… cause she’s a goddess, remember?  No humans need apply to my secretary pool!

Behold!

Lee Ha Nui.  Even Kim Na Gil doesn’t stand a chance with this woman.

Here in the Western World some idiot decided to rename her Honey Lee (I am in denial if this was self-inflicted!), which sounds like a porn star name.  To me, she will forever be Secretary Jang Young Hee… spying on her boss, bringing mango juice with a smile on her face, and offering to drive her drunken associates home.  I have a feeling the person in charge of costuming cried every night with gratitude for getting to dress this woman each day – and what cool dresses!  She had the most respectably sexy clothes I’ve ever seen.

Oh, Secretaries of Korean Dramas!  Stay on your pedestals… we’ll keep throwing petals at your feet.