I feel that A Business Proposal is one of those Korean dramas I always talk about, but I haven’t actually sat down to write a review for it, so here are my thoughts.
First of all, let me just quickly say that the lead actors in this drama, Ahn Hyo Seop and Kim Se Jeong, are my ultimate biases, so it was a no-brainer that I would give it a chance, and I absolutely loved it.
What Is A Business Proposal Starring Ahn Hyo Seop & Kim Se Jeong About?
So, this drama starts with Ha Ri (Kim Se Jeong) being asked by her friend Young Seo (Seol In Ah) to substitute her on a date. We learn that this is something that they have done over and over again.
Basically, Young Seo comes from a wealthy family, and her father has been pressuring her to get married, so he occasionally arranges dates for her. But she doesn’t like that idea, so she always sends her friend in her place to do something that will sabotage her date, which is usually pretending to be possessed or something like that.
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So this time around, Young Seo asks Ha Ri to go in her place, and after some resistance, Ha Ri agrees. But then when she gets there, she realizes that her best friend’s date is actually her boss. The thing is, she and her boss have never talked, but being that she works for one of the four most successful companies in the entire country, and the boss is someone whose face is plastered around, she knows him, and she’s a little nervous.
But she doesn’t think about it too much, and she decides to simply do something that will make him hate her and then go back to normal. But this backfires because the CEO was also forced to come on the date, and he’s also looking for something to do that would make his grandfather leave him alone and stop pestering him to find a wife.
Needless to say, he decides that Ha Ri, who has all the worst behaviors and is a very odd person, is the best candidate for this, so he proposes to her that they start dating. She’s very shocked, but eventually, she agrees, and soon enough, she’s two-timing because on one end she has to be the loyal employee, and on the other end, she has to be his successful girlfriend.
He eventually finds out about her deception, and then they decide to continue their fake relationship if only to get his grandfather off his back, and it’s in this situation that their romance blooms.
A Business Proposal Starring Ahn Hyo Seop & Kim Se Jeong Full Review
If you’ve been online on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, or any other platform with a vibrant K-drama community for any length of time, then you must have seen the many memes that came from this drama. It was entertaining from start to finish, and I loved every second of it.
And one thing I personally really appreciated was the secondary couple. So, you remember I talked about her best friend Young Seo earlier, that is the best friend who sent her on the dates? Well, her best friend ends up with our male lead’s best friend – Cha Sung Hoon played by Kim Min Gue – and it was simply the cutest thing ever.
No matter how I look at it, they are so well-suited, and it’s amazing that a pair like that could simply exist in this world. I am not the type of K-drama watcher who ships drama couples as real-life couples, but this was the very first time I broke my own rule for that because their chemistry was out of this world.
The OST was also sublime because there was this issue that we used to talk about a few years ago in the community about sometimes the OST overshadowing the actual dialogue in the drama, and even though this worked to the benefit of the OST producers because many of the songs became favorites to many watchers, it sort of disrupted the viewing experience and could become a little annoying and very loud.
There is no such problem in this drama, and I just simply loved the songs. Here is a link to the OST on Spotify; listen to it and let me know which of them is your favorite.
So, a fake relationship is one of my favorite tropes, and it’s something that I will always watch, so having it together with the workplace romance in this drama was simply the stuff dreams are made of. I would never have expected it, and it was just fantastic.
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While watching this drama, I couldn’t help but see so many similarities between it and My Secret Romance, which aired several years before Business Proposal. So, in case you don’t know, Business Proposal is a Netflix original, and the storylines are so similar that you are definitely going to enjoy My Secret Romance if you like Business Proposal.
The side characters are also very interesting, and I actually really appreciated the fact that the showrunners did not prolong the love triangle between our female lead, our first male lead, and the third male lead, Lee Min Woo (Go Wook).
I don’t know if this is how it’s going to be classified, but personally, I feel that our first male lead’s best friend, who is the ML of the secondary couple, is actually the second lead, while the second love interest of our female lead (Lee Min Woo) is actually the third main lead, although I know that some other people might have a totally different characterization.
As for skinship, our leads in this drama do kiss a lot, but it’s not so steamy, and it’s not actually something that is very memorable like what happened in What’s Wrong with Secretary Kim.
On the other hand, our second male lead even had a bedroom scene with Seol In Ah, which was really the hottest thing ever, and I am sure you might have seen the memes floating around because I may or may not have created and mass-distributed some of them.
Anyway, I totally loved this drama, and I will recommend it to anyone who wants to watch a workplace romance that is soft and light-hearted in the best way possible, and bonus points because it has wonderful casting and totally beautiful leads. They can also act in a way that many actors nowadays can’t, so it wasn’t cringe, and I would definitely rewatch it very soon.
Have you watched Business Proposal? What do you think about it? Did you enjoy it? Is this a drama that you would like to give another chance? Do you think my review is fair?
Let me know what you think in my comment section, and make sure you check out the related posts to get even more perfect recommendations.
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