What’s Wrong With Secretary Kim?

I have just finished watching What’s Wrong With Secretary Kim. To be honest, I thought I’d powered through this drama, but actually, I’ve certainly watched a series quicker. I think it was just in comparison to the behemoth that was Six Flying Dragons, that watching this seemed to fly by.

Not going to lie, I had high expectations, and I’m not sure I can honestly say they were totally met. It was good fun but predictable; easy to watch but not addictive. Let’s just stay it doesn’t knock off any of my top 5. I’d very much rank it alongside the likes of  Strong Woman Do Bong Soon and Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok Joo as a lighthearted romantic drama that I enjoyed but wasn’t anything particularly special. 

It’s the classic rich man falls for penniless girl plot, with some memory loss, family strife and copious  amounts of very obvious product placement thrown in. Just like The Heirs. Just like Boys Over Flowers. Just like Shopping King Louis ... I could go on. There were a fair few side stories, a rather disappointing second male lead*, and literally everyone had a very predictably happy ending. I do enjoy watching Park Seo Joon, and I thought Park Min Young was beautiful (I’ve only just realised that she was the lead in Healer and City Hunter - did not recognise her at all). It’s basically just crowd pleasing fluff with big names and pretty faces. So just like 98% of Asian drama. 

* they could have done so much with his character, but no, they basically wrote him off. He is listed as main cast, had a solo title card in the opening credits, the set up for a love triangle even past the big reveal - but no, I think the SA who played an intern had more screen time than him. And we all know how much I love a second male lead (it’s the Rui Effect). 

It is really highly rated on Viki at a 9.8, which puts it on a level with DotS, Bong Soon, Weightlifting Fairy and Healer, but I get the impression more and more that these ratings can’t be trusted to truly represent what they are supposed to mean as opposed to popularity scores. You see series that have yet to start airing with high scores because people start rating it based on the casting. They do tend to drop down quickly, but it’s a lesson to learn, to only pay attention to ratings on older shows. 

Edit: I feel like this post has come across as much more negative than I meant it to. I think I just missed the action and significance of Six Flying Dragons. This series was a classic kdrama - nothing new. I enjoyed it a lot, I really did, and it would probably be up there in my top 20 or so. 

Tl;Dr

It was enjoyable.

I recommend it to girls with unrealistic expectations of men. 

I probably won’t watch it again. 

Six Flying Dragons

I finally did it. I finally finished watching Six Flying Dragons, which I have been watching since April. That’s 5 months. I’m actually a little shocked by that.

You know what, I did really enjoy this series. It was really well done. It made me smile, it made me cry and it had the extraordinary ability to make me simultaneously horrified and sympathetic to the main character doing some truly horrendous things. The acting was great, the characters were interesting and the production value was amazing. Mostly, it was just fascinating to learn about such an influential period in korean history.

That being said, I have never had a series send me to sleep so quickly. I would start watching an episode wide awake, and less than 10 mins later, I would be asleep. That’s not to say I found it boring, far from, but it was heavy going and just too much to cope with at bed time. Whenever I watched it during the day, I could easily power through multiple episodes, but during the week, when I only watch drama right before I go to sleep, it would take me all week to finish one episode.

I think that pretty much sums up everything I want to say. I could write a more in-depth review but I don’t know that I see much point. It kind of feels weird not including the plot, but there were 50 episodes, each at an hour long, and a lot happened in every single episode - I’d be here all day. I’ve heard it’s a prequel to Tree with Deep Roots, so maybe I’ll watch that at some point, but at the moment, I’m more interested in What’s Wrong With Secretary Kim ... I mean, it’s Park Seo Joon, can you blame me??

Tl;dr
I’m glad I watched it
I recommend others watching it
I probably wouldn’t watch it again

Solitary

I live on my own. My family live over two hours drive away. My friends are anything from 25 minutes drive away to a little over an hour. Most have kids, most have jobs, and all are unable to get to you quickly if you need help.

Sometimes, you become very aware that should you need someone in an emergency, you have no one that you can call on, and that makes you feel very lonely. 

Explore

Instagram has a feature called explore, a page which shows you suggested content based on things you’ve previously liked, searched for or that people you follow have liked.

Normally, my explore page is full of something to do with the korean entertainment industry, namely funny clips of SHINee, BTS and Super Junior, with a few other artists shown in on occasion.

However, you watch one video of a puppy dancing while getting a hair cut * and all of a sudden, half your explore page is of dog grooming videos. I don’t like dogs, and I don’t care for seeing them with or without a pair of scissors in their face.

You somehow get sucked into a series of food asmr videos one time, and then you are bombarded with people eating ice and aloe vera for weeks to come. I get some people find it relaxing or tingly or whatever, but I’m not going to lie, I watch these things unwillingly with morbid fascination. Like I can’t not look at it. Nobody wants to straight up bite off a chunk of aloe vera and eat it, and you can see that she finds it bloody disgusting too, but hey, each to their own. **

Give me back SHINee being dorks and kiss scenes from korean dramas.






*ok so I may have watched that one video like a thousand times, but it was cute, he was DANCING.

** there is a part of me that quite wants to start an asmr account where I eat squishy foods and they make crunching sounds and vice versa. Like I’m eating a doughnut and instead it sounds like I’m biting through a raw potato. I think that’d be funny. Plus I think asmr makes a lot of money. I’d like to get paid to eat.