Dramas like
What's Wrong with Secretary Kim

The same actress, the same office, a better back half. Park Min Young again, opposite a new boss who finds out something embarrassing about her private life and decides to protect it. Identical pleasure: two competent adults in a workplace, together early, staying together, with the comedy coming from the gap between their public and private selves. Difference: no amnesia at the centre of it, though a childhood connection and family trauma do arrive late, and a rewatch score that comfortably beats this one.

Slow start Episode 3, once the boss knows and the show stops protecting the secret.

The purest version of the boss-employee joke. A blind date under a false identity where the man on the other side is the chief executive, played entirely for farce and moving at twice the speed. Same appetite for a live-action cartoon and the same willingness to let two leads carry everything. Difference: twelve episodes rather than sixteen, so it never has to invent a second act.

Hooks early Episode 1. It commits to the bit in the first ten minutes, and that is the appeal.

Cold professional, warm woman, same shape. An actress placed as a secretary in a law firm, and a lawyer who has no idea how to be around her. It hits the exact same beats and Lee Dong Wook plays stiffness better than almost anyone. Difference: it has even less plot, and the middle stretch sags harder, with the per-episode ratings falling under seven before recovering.

Hooks early Episode 1. The premise is set up and paid off inside the hour.

The chaebol heir and the employee, at hotel scale. Same power gap, same glossy corporate setting, same structure of a man learning to be a person because one member of staff will not flatter him. Difference: it is thinner even than this one, and it is worse at the workplace half, treating the hotel as wallpaper rather than as a job.

Hooks early Episode 1. The heir and the smiling hotel clerk meet in the first twenty minutes and the show never complicates that.

If you want the same leads-first comedy with an actual plot bolted on. Ji Chang Wook and Nam Ji Hyun in a law office, bickering their way into a relationship while a murder case runs in parallel. The romance half is as good as this one's. Difference: the other half is a serial-killer thriller, so the tone lurches in a way Secretary Kim never does.

Hooks early Episode 1. The wrongful accusation and the meet-cute happen in the same hour.

The same warmth, at a much lower income bracket. Two friends of twenty years who finally get together, and a show that is genuinely interested in the part after they do. Same easy chemistry, same comic rhythm. Difference: nobody here is rich, the workplace is a humiliation rather than a status symbol, and the show has real things on its mind.

Hooks early Episode 1. The friendship is fully established in the first twenty minutes.