K-Drama Rewind, Her Private Life: Park Min-young and Kim Jae-wook’s zingy love letter to the office romcom boom

It’s a truth universally acknowledged that Park Min-young could have chemistry with anything, even a rock. So imagine the combination when, in 2019, she starred in Her Private Life opposite Kim Jae-wook, who already had a versatile filmography behind him, from the flower-boy charm of Coffee Prince to the chilling killer of Voice.

And, if you came to the drama, fresh after What’s Wrong with Secretary Kim, which featured Min-young with a dashing Park Seo-joon—a couple so dashing that the writers decided that the drama didn’t need much of a story—you would see that Her Private Life, actually decided to provide some meat to the office romcom bones.

A fresh, sweet story with zing, with a fun premise: Sung Deok-mi (Min-young) is a poised art curator who runs headlong into Ryan Gold (Jae-wook), a stern, brooding artist who swans in as the museum’s new director and, naturally, her boss. Gasp!

What he doesn’t know is that his composed curator moonlights as a shrieking K-pop fangirl running a fansite for idol Cha Si-an. Life twists, the two wind up fake dating, and the show cheerfully embraces two of the genre’s most well-worn tropes at once, fake dating and enemies-to-lovers. Sparks fly, as contractually obliged, and keep on flying for sixteen episodes.

The romance is tender, fresh, almost vulnerable. It has one of the gentlest confessions of an era when K-drama confessions came at full volume, ideally in the rain.

This one takes place in a room away from prying eyes: A melancholy Deok-mi asks whether fake-dating her was really that exhausting, and Ryan admits it was, because he wanted it to be real. For the traditionalists, there’s the full catalogue of classic build-up: the protective spin-her-around move, and all the yearning two very good-looking people can muster.

Of course, sixteen episodes need a plot. So we get a somewhat phoned-in contrivance about Ryan’s parentage, and a K-pop storyline that deserved more meat. You can connect the two.

What the show gets right is its refusal to make Deok-mi’s fandom the punchline. K-drama fangirls are usually comic relief: shrill, slightly unhinged, there to be rescued from themselves.

Here, her fan life is skilled labour. She shoots, edits and runs a community with the same precision she brings to hanging a gallery wall. The script draws a neat line between her two worlds. Curating art and curating an idol are both acts of devotion to something beautiful you’ll never own. Ryan, a man who has built his whole life around art, is hardly in a position to sneer. That’s what makes the title clever: her “private life” is a joy she’s been taught to hide.

Kim Jae-wook plays Ryan with a dry, near-deadpan restraint, the opposite of Park Seo-joon’s peacocking. His warmth leaks out in the margins rather than arriving on cue. It’s a smart counterweight to Min-young’s sunnier register, and it’s why the silent moments land harder than the grand ones. Even Ahn Bo-hyun, as her friend Nam Eun-gi, gets more dignity than the usual pining second lead.

Yet, more than anything else, Her Private Life is a reminder of the K-Drama office romcom days. They really don’t make them like this anymore, or at least they didn’t for a while. The office romcom is slowly reviving itself this year, but there was a time when the boom was well and truly booming, and the workplace was an actual living, breathing character. You learned about the profession, as the drama progressed. Her Private Life had its hushed, gleaming art museum. Romance Is a Bonus Book gave Lee Jong-suk a cosy publishing house full of ink and longing.

Touch Your Heart turned a law firm into the setting for a sweet, simple story about an actress playing secretary to a famously prickly lawyer. The drama was in the cubicles, every boardroom a battlefield of longing glances, and every coffee run carried romantic stakes. If the revival has any sense, it will remember the golden rule of that era: The job is just the well-written excuse and needs to be just as convincing, and yes, the yearning is the real job description.