The love between a competent but cranky boss and a secretary who closely supports him. It is the epitome of the subgenre of office romance. Numerous dramas, such as “What's Wrong with Secretary Kim?” and “Jugglers : secretaries,” have used this theme to create romance. But after the "Me Too" movement swept the world, there seemed to be no place for this genre anymore.

The SBS TV series “Love Scout,” which premiered in the beginning of 2025, continues the lineage of such a genre. The series, which bills itself as a “close-care romance,” centers on a cold-hearted headhunting company CEO and his secretary, who has the best senses and caring abilities. Their relationship, which started out rather ironically, turns into love as they work together. For viewers who have seen quite a lot of TV series, it is a “no-brainer” story, but its popularity is soaring. The series started with 5.2 percent ratings on January 3, and in its second week of broadcasting, it managed to enter the 10 percent range.

The strategy of “Love Scout” is to subvert gender. Unlike previous TV series that depicted romance between a male boss and a female secretary, a female character is a boss and a male character is a secretary. Ji-yun (played by Han Ji-min) is a talented headhunter who has built her search firm into the second largest in the industry in just five years. She is good at her job, but she is a simpleton in everyday life. Her desk is littered with papers and business cards, and she skips meals unless someone brings her food. She seems cold, but she secretly suffers from the loss of her father, the only family she ever had, in an accident.

Then Eun-ho (Lee Joon-hyuk) appears as Ji-yun’s secretary. Eun-ho is the perfect secretary. He is handsome, has a good personality, and is good at work. He knows what he needs to do before his boss asks for it, and he takes care of Ji-yun’s meals and physical and mental health. He is not a female secretary who fixes her male boss‘s tie, but a male secretary who ties the disheveled collar of his female boss. The complete performance of men's caring work, which has been considered the domain of women, is a force that makes the series fresh, which does not deviate significantly from genre conventions. This was the strategy of the successful TV series “Queen of Tears,” which twisted the clichés into love between a tough chaebol woman and an ordinary man’s love.

It is also thanks to this strategy that “Love Scout” is free from the criticism that the genre revolving around a secretary has had to face in the past. Dramas like the aforementioned “What‘s Wrong with Secretary Kim” was criticized for blurring the lines between work and romance, degrading the professionalism of secretarial work and covering the realities of secretarial work, including sexual assault by force.

The new TV series follows Ji-yun, a headhunter, as she slowly grows closer to Eun-ho as she solves one recruitment case after another. The common denominator of being a victim of internal intrigue and betrayal shortens the distance between them. In the cold world of headhunting, where talent is taken and given away, it seems natural that the two people with a humanistic aspect fall in love.

However, the gender reversal paradoxically emphasizes the skewed gender roles in Korean society. Most of Eun-ho‘s qualities as a secretary stem from the fact that he is a single dad, and he wins Ji-yun’s heart with his caring skills, which he learned while raising his daughter alone. He gives Ji-yun her daughter‘s hair tie as they eat ramen, and when it suddenly starts raining, he puts her daughter’s “pinkfong” umbrella on her. At that moment, Ji-yun’s eyes become heart-shaped. If being a single mom is a fatal disadvantage in most romantic relationships, Eun-ho is attractive because he is a single dad. The other drawback in the series is Ji-yun. She is a competent career woman, but in her everyday life, she makes mistakes so often that she hardly seems like an ordinary adult. She gets injured all the time and does not recognize her own car. Ji-yun’s imperfections are utilized as a means for Eun-ho‘s perfection to shine.

The difference becomes even clearer when looking at what makes the two works featuring a perfect secretary, “Love Scout” and “What’s Wrong with Secretary Kim,” popular outside the series itself. The former was Eun-ho's kindness and the latter was Secretary Kim's “tight-fitting suit.”