The 9 Best K-drama Second Male Leads Who Broke My Heart

It's been a while since I've had a good bout of Second Lead Syndrome—the kind where you spend half the series clutching your heart and shouting at the screen because you know deep down inside that the female lead of a K-drama is going to pick the "wrong" guy.

Recently, I've been in weird limbo with The Best Hit, and I can't tell if my heart is going to be crushed by second lead syndrome for Ji Hoon or if he's actually the romantic endgame for our female lead this time. Usually K-dramas are so blatant about the central pairing that I haven't been this confused since Answer Me 1988 In this case, though, I think it's less about stringing the audience along and more about developing non-romantic parts of the story, which I'm okay with.

Either way, the whole thing's got me reflecting on all my favorite second leads of yore. Here are my 9 favorite K-drama second male leads of all time—the ones I would have picked in a heartbeat if I were in charge of writing the script.

1. Kim Shin Hyuk (played by Siwon), She Was Pretty

Aaaaaaaand now I'm clutching my heart all over again.

I've said this before, and I'll say it again: I started this series for Park Seo Joon, and I stuck around for Siwon. Siwon stole the show with Shin Hyuk, and this is one case of Second Lead Syndrome where I genuinely think the leads should have swapped partners. Shin Hyuk's quirky sense of humor seemed much better suited to Hye Jin's personality than stick-in-the-mud Sung Joon's grumpiness. 

What made it all worse is that Siwon really threw himself into this role and proved himself as an actor better than any of his previous roles (at least the ones I've seen). And then he finished this show and ran off to military service, and we haven't been able to see him in a leading role since. Sigh.

Full She Was Pretty review

2. Moon Jae Shin/Geol Oh (played by Yoo Ah In), Sungkyungkwan Scandal

Geol Oh. Ohhhhh Geol Oh, my first true K-drama love. In the context of Sungkyungkwan Scandal, I guess I kinda sorta get why Yoon Hee picked who she did, but you'd better believe that if I found myself hiding out in Sungkyungkwan, I'd have heart eyes only for our tousled, grumpy warrior. 

I was already rooting for him as the scruffy Batman type, and then, THEN they went and gave him nervous hiccups around women, and I was a goner.

Full Sungkyungkwan Scandal review

3. Yoon Ji Hoo (played by Kim Hyun Joong), Boys over Flowers

This was the first drama where I actually googled who the female lead chooses as I was watching the show. It was also, incidentally, where I first encountered the term "Second Lead Syndrome."

Jun Pyo spent the entire series being a terrible person. There, I said it. He opened the series bullying someone into attempting suicide. Then he bullied Jan Di into dating him. And you know what? Even if he fell for Jan Di, I never got the sense that he really got over his terrible personality.

Then you have Ji Hoo, who is kind and supportive. Unlike other second leads who never really have a shot with the female lead, Ji Hoo is not only Jan Di's first love but also—as a fortune teller informs the audience in the most rage-inducing piece of second-lead info ever—her true soulmate. Thanks for nothing, fortune teller.

4. "Master" (played by Lee Chun Hee), Dating Agency Cyrano

Exactly what I said to him every time he was on my screen.

Continuing with the theme of "female leads who have nonsensical taste in men," we get to Dating Agency Cyrano, where I spent the entire series wondering what on earth sassy Min Young saw in boring, emotionally stunted Byung Hoon when she could have been dating smart, fun, kind chef with a bad boy side (and Lee Chun Hee's face), "Master."

Out of all the shows on this entire list, I think this one might win for the biggest discrepancy in quality between the first male lead and the guy relegated to the sidelines. I don't get it. I really, really don't.

Full Dating Agency Cyrano review

5. Jung Hwan (played by Ryu Joon Yul), Answer Me 1988

Is it really any surprise that one of the Answer Me series made it to the list? I managed to root for the right guy in the first two installments, but I kinda feel like the Answer Me gods visited their wrath on my heart tenfold with Jung Hwan.

It's not that I disliked Taek as a husband—it's that a giant chunk of the narrative structure was built to make me feel root for Jung Hwan, and then we got the rug pulled out from under us and didn't even get a satisfying resolution to his story. No, I'm not at all bitter about this anymore! (Yes, I am.)

Full Answer Me 1988 review

6. Jeremy or Shin Woo (played by Lee Hong Ki and Jung Yong Hwa), You're Beautiful)

Pretty much anyone—anyone—would have been better than Jerkface McJerkerton Tae Kyung. I think this might be where my weird aversion to Jang Geun Suk comes from. Try as I might, I cannot talk myself into watching any of his other shows after the trash fire that was this romance.

Go Mi Nyu could have picked the lovable and playful Jeremy. She could have picked the secretly supportive Shin Woo. She could have gone back to the nunnery. Any of those options would have been fine. But no, she threw up in Tae Kyung's mouth, and so the laws of all dramadom decreed that she would love him forever. *Shudders*

Full You're Beautiful review

7. Choi Young Do (played by Kim Woo Bin), Heirs

Ok, if I had a friend who asked me if she should date Kim Tan or Young Do, I would probably tell her to ditch them both and run as fast as she could from that toxic school (and then sell that super expensive uniform on eBay or something). That being said, I couldn't help but root for Young Do, who Kim Woo Bin made genuinely intriguing and heartbreaking to watch in comparison to Lee Min Ho's Kim Tan, who had the personality of a potato.

Don't date bullies in real life. But maybe it's okay to clutch your heart a little when they're crying over noodles on a show.

Full Heirs review

8. Chief Gook (played by Lee Mil Mo), Emergency Couple

Coco and I were on exact opposite sides of the shipping fence for this show. She was 100% in favor of Chang Min and his rippling muscles, and meanwhile I was pining away for Chief Gook, the scruffy, gruff second male lead (mayyyybe I'm seeing a pattern here with Geol Oh...).  I mean, just look at these texts I sent back in the day:

You know you've got it bad when you're insisting that other people share your second lead pain. 

Full Emergency Couple review

9. Hwang Wook (played by Kim Sung Oh), Warm and Cozy

I loooooove me some Yoo Yun Suk, but the character of Gun Woo needed to fall off a cliff into the ocean, get eaten by fish, digested, and pooped out far, far away from Jung Joo so she could get over him and his emotionally manipulative ways and date the goofy mayor instead.

As if I didn't already love Kim Sung Oh enough, this role has endeared him to me forever. He may or may not have been the only thing that kept me watching to the end—that, and I was watching with a group of friends, all of whom kept squealing with glee whenever Hwang Wook showed up.

What about second female lead syndrome?

K-dramas are typically constructed to favor second male lead syndrome. In order to properly play out the reverse harem fantasy, show writers often make second female leads either completely irrelevant to the main loveline (aka the best friend with her own story going on) or a terrible bitch who no one would root for in the first place. Most second female leads are disqualified as actual threats to the central pairing the second they show up on screen, and they're relegated to being annoying plot devices that keep our leads apart for as long as possible until they pair up with the second male lead, turn so evil that they become murderers and go to jail, or both.

Still, second female lead syndrome does sometimes happen—In She Was Pretty, I for sure thought Hye Jin's best friend Ha Ri would be a better fit for Sung Joon (which would conveniently leave Hye Jin to date Shin Hyuk...), and I've heard from a lot of viewers that the second female lead in Doctor Strange far outshone the female lead. 

My one true case of second female lead was Joseon Gunman, where Jeon Hye Bin's Hye Won had awesome chemistry with Yoon Kang, and I definitely wanted them to get together for the entire first half of the show (after which I dropped it so I wouldn't have to watch her go evil.) As it turns out, Lee Joon Ki and Jeon Hye Bin eventually started dating in real life, which makes me feel extra validated about the chemistry vibes I was getting!

Image via Namoo Actors

But really, Second Female Lead Syndrome happens few and far between, and it's usually the men we're left heartbroken over at the end of the show.

Who's Your Worst Case of Second Lead Syndrome?

Have you ever suffered from Second Lead Syndrome? Who got you worst?

If you want to discuss more Second Lead Syndrome, check out this post from way back in the day, when we talked about all the reasons we catch (or don't catch) the second lead disease. 

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: The Problem with Makeover K-dramas

When I heard the premise for Oh My Venus, I just about reached through my computer and strangled everyone involved with the production. On the one hand, it's Shin Min Ah and So Ji Sub! On the other hand, it's a makeover drama, which may just be my absolute least favorite type of K-drama on the entire planet.

Coming on the heels of another makeover K-drama  (She Was Pretty) and following a similar "sad-fat-girl-turns-skinny" formula of last year's Birth of a Beauty (and casting poor Jung Gyu Woon to play basically the exact same role he played in the earlier drama), Oh My Venus made me especially wary.

In the end, though, Shin Min Ah and So Ji Sub won out, and I found myself watching the series. It's been an interesting experience thus far, with alternating scenes of things I hate and things I really appreciate.

Since K-dramaland seems so intent on making these types of shows over and over again, I want to have a conversation about why they're so troubling to begin with and what (if anything) makes them work.

"I Love Myself — But I Also Look Nothing like Myself"

Makeover K-dramas are inherently problematic for me. Often, the plot descriptions will include feel-good phrases like "she learns to love herself" or "They come to value personality over looks." Those things are awesome and all, but it's hard to cheer fully for a message about positive self-esteem and body image when the only way the heroine learns to love herself is by changing absolutely everything about her outside and conforming to Korea's strict beauty standards.

Take Birth of a Beauty as a prime example. To give the writers credit, the last few episodes were full of Geum Ran talking about how she learned to love her true self, and they even made some (horribly clumsy) attempts to "prove" that Tae Hee also loved her for who she was instead of the "Sara" exterior.

That's great! But wait — how, exactly, did she learn to love herself? Oh yeah, she got full-body surgery to look like Han Ye Seul. And sure, they included images of the heavier actress to remind us that she was still the same person on the inside — but right now, she still looks like Han Ye Seul. And she will always look like Han Ye Seul. 

Similarly, even if Tae Hee used a crazy contraption to see Geum Ran as her former self and was like "nope, I'm not disgusted by her fatness," at the end of the day, he's still going to bed with Han Ye Seul, and there's simply no getting around it.

Buying into the Stereotype

The other central problem with makeover dramas is that even the okay ones buy into the very same beauty standards they claim to undermine. It's enough to give you emotional whiplash to cheer in one scene and cringe in the very next.

So far, that's exactly what's happening with Oh My Venus. On the one hand, the writer seems to be handling the premise with more care than I expected. I love how Joo Eun believes in and stands up for herself even when other people mock her appearance. I also appreciate that if they had to put Shin Min Ah into a fat suit, it's one that makes her face look realistically chubby instead of saying she weighs 170 lbs and making her look like she weighs 400 lbs. (The face is good, but can we all just ignore the full-body fat suit, please? Random lumps everywhere, but nowhere they belong!)

And yet, even as the show seems to be making strides on one side, it backpedals on the other. It's one thing to have characters constantly commenting on her weight and making fun of her, but it's another when the show does the exact same thing. If she supposedly weighs 170 lbs, why do a UFC fighter and a top-tier trainer have so much difficulty carrying her on an airplane? Why does she make the sound of a freight train crashing when running into a glass door? Why, above all else, IS THERE JOKEY CIRCUS MUSIC PLAYING EVERY TIME SOMETHING EMBARRASSING HAPPENS TO HER?!?! 

What were your seven shirtless workout scenes for if not for this moment?

If the show was going to act like overweight people are sooooooo clumsy and it's soooooooo funny, then I almost wish they had made her fat suit bigger. Otherwise, it just seems like anyone who weighs more than real-life Shin Min Ah or Yoo In Young is a walking joke waiting to happen. 

The same goes for So Ji Sub's character. The charisma of the So Ji Sub-Shin Min Ah pairing is already impossible to resist, and I love how his character sees the good in her and wants to be around her even before she loses any weight. But please, please, can he never utter the words "Your body is mine" ever again? Please? Thanks.

Supporting one Beauty Standard

Of course, there's also the problem of Korean beauty standards in the first place. When K-dramas say a character is "ugly," half of the time that means frizzy hair and bad clothes, and then the "makeover" involves making her look exactly like every other Korean actress out there.

She Was Pretty fell into this trap. Why was everyone so horrified by her looks in the first place? I actually liked her curly hair and rosy cheeks, and I was annoyed that her makeover tamed everything interesting about her and made her look like a clone of everyone else. 

I get that she worked at a fashion magazine and needed to be taken seriously, but she could have done so by using some hair product and thinking about her clothes more carefully instead of changing her entire look. Once the makeover happened, Hye Jin's personality also kind of disappeared. It's like the second they tamed her hair, they also drained her character's life force. 

Because "ugly" = curly hair and "pretty" = stick-straight hair. It's like Princess Diaries all over again.
Also, I may just hate this look because that shirt ruffle looks suspiciously like my childhood nemesis dress.

Fortunately, the show's writer seemed to recognize the problem and actually allowed Hye Jin to go back to her original style at the end. Without that backwards transformation, the makeover would have been a total miss for me.

Can a K-drama Makeover Work?

Although I'm not 100% sold on the idea that focusing an entire show around physical appearance is ever a good idea (unless you're Miss Korea, in which case I love you and you can continue about your feminist business), there are some approaches that are better than others. Here's what works for me, personally:

1. Give us a reason for the makeover: If makeovers are to work, there needs to be a reason other than "I want my ex to love me again!" or "This rich man is suddenly interested in me, and I need to look 'worthy' to hang out with him!" This is a point in favor of Oh My Venus. By putting the emphasis on her health from the start, the series becomes less about looking good and more about overall well-being. Healthy lifestyles I can support. Getting skinny to win a man I cannot.

   

   I love her for this line. Even if her boyfriend doesn't take her back, it's still worth it to her.

2. Let the female lead take the lead: In a similar vein, the character receiving the makeover should be the driving force behind it. I know there's the whole Pretty Woman cliche of having a wealthy man pay to dress you up, but the whole idea of a guy forcing a woman to change her appearance to suit his tastes makes me vomit in my mouth a little. Boys over Flowers, I'm looking at you.
3. Stay true to character: I already talked about this with She Was Pretty, but instead of changing absolutely everything about a character, why not embrace that quirkiness as part of the character? So often, the makeover turns into a symbolic turning point where the quirky female lead suddenly turns into a domesticated doll, like in Prime Minister and I. In contrast, a fantastic K-drama makeover that bucked this trend was Oh! My Lady. She was an ahjumma through and through, so when she got her "makeover," it wasn't necessarily a look I would have chosen, but it suited her personality perfectly.

   

   To be fair, I wouldn't have picked Jan Di's "makeover" getup either, so....

4. Skip the makeover: I can't think of a good example where this happened, but wouldn't it be refreshing if a drama just skipped the makeover entirely? Let the "fat" or "ugly" woman find love without changing anything. I guess you could count My Lovely Samsoon, though I didn't know Kim Sun Ah was supposed to be fat until the characters pointed it out, so that doesn't really count for me. If that's too radical for K-drama writers, you can always go the She Was Pretty or Dream High route, where the character gets a makeover, but decides that she really was happier before. Did I love IU's fat suit? No. But I liked the sentiment that her character settled to a weight were she was healthier than where she started, but not killing herself over every calorie.

How do you feel about makeover dramas? Do you hate them? Do you tolerate them? Am I overthinking this entire thing? How do you feel about the Oh My Venus approach so far? Share all your thoughts!

Note: After a recent layout switch, we're seeing comments posted before April 7, 2017 missing on a few posts. We're working on a solution, and in the meantime, any new comments you leave will work!

She Was Pretty Korean Drama Review, Or, A Tribute to Siwon's Face

From what I can tell, a lot of people really, really loved She Was Pretty, making it one of the most popular dramas of the entire year.

Fair warning: I was not one of those people. If you adored the drama and would rather not hear negative things about it, stop reading now.

You have been warned. Now let us proceed.

If I had my way, this is the review I would give, as told by Siwon faces:

No? I can't get away with a million pictures of Siwon? Very well, then. Allow me to elaborate.

First of all, let me make this very clear: I started the drama for Park Seo Joon. I finished it for Siwon. Siwon stole the show, and I say that as someone who didn't go into the series as a blind Siwon superfan.

I never really had strong feelings for Siwon one way or the other, but this character was perfect for him. He's definitely become more natural as an actor since his Oh! My Lady days, and, although his character was mainly comedic, he was able to drive home a full range of emotions over the course of the series. I may have clutched my heart once or twice. (Dear drama writers: WHY did he tell her to answer the phone???? That was just cruel.)

Seriously. My heart!

Siwon's scenes were easily the highlight of the series, but there were some other things that I generally enjoyed, like the friendship between Ha Ri and Hye Jin or the members of the Most team. Overall, though, aside from the revelation that was Siwon, the series felt pretty bleh overall.

Considering how overwhelmingly positive most of the feedback on this series was, I tried to pinpoint exactly what it was that didn't gel with me as a viewer. Here are some of the biggest issues as I saw them:

Issue 1: The lead characterizations: I love love love love loooooove Park Seo Joon, but his character might as well have been a cardboard box for the interest he generated. I don't mind cliches when they're used in interesting ways or if the actors inject the characters with some extra spark (lie in Marriage, Not Dating, for example), but his character did none of those things. He was a typical terrible rich guy lead who magically changed overnight through the power of love into a completely bland, smiling paper cutout. 

There were glimpses of delving into his background and giving us a better look at how the sweet, chubby boy became this angry, wounded man, but we never really got there. Instead, the drama focused so narrowly on his love with Hye Jin that he turned into a dull boyfriend-bot without anything really compelling to keep me watching.

Hye Jin had glimpses of better moments, especially at first, but after her makeover, she also became the ideal, tamed Candy girl we've seen a billion times before. I honestly feel like the writer was following the K-drama playbook so closely with these two that we could easily copy and past 80% of their dialogue into an entirely different drama without anyone noticing a difference.

Siwon and I feel the same way about lame characters.

Issue 2: Why is she with him? No, seriously. I think we were all so worried about whether Sung Joon loved Hye Jin as her present self that we forgot to ask ourselves the same question in reverse. Aside from the fact that he was her childhood friend, what reason does Hye Jin really have to fall for him in the first place?

I know this is going to make some people upset, but for the vast majority of the series, I honestly got a more motherly vibe from Hye Jin towards Sung Joon than a romantic one. Yes, she mothers everyone and that's just her personality, but if Sung Joon is supposedly her true love, shouldn't he be different? Even consider the romantic gesture of cutting his nails for him. Why does he like it? Because that's what his mom did. Cute gesture, but no. Just no.

Gross and weird. Cut your own nails.

Issue 3: Wasted potential: At the beginning of the series, there were quit a few things that grabbed my interest, and I saw them as a chance for the writers to try something new. Unfortunately, the writer completely dropped the ball on most of these interesting threads and forgot they existed. For example, Ha Ri was a really interesting character at first. Even when she was dating her best friend's first love, I thought she could be a well-rounded, intriguing character. Instead, she just got pushed off to the side after Sung Joon discovered her secret. I mean, I'm happy that she found herself and all, but it kind of felt like the script ignored her as much as possible after episode 10.

Okay, okay, I think that's enough bagging on the show for now. It wasn't actively bad. It just didn't really give me any reason to keep watching.

In case you wondered what the other people in the show look like, this is them.

Conclusions

On a narrative front, She Was Pretty didn't really work for me. The characters weren't unique or interesting enough for a character-driven drama, and, for the first time ever, I was so uninterested in the central pairing that I found myself tempted to fast forward through their cute scenes together. That's really saying something.

That being said, I'm glad I watched in order to discover Siwon. This was his perfect army sendoff, and he has at least one new fan looking forward to seeing what he does upon his return from enlistment.

Surely you won't begrudge me just one more Siwon for the road, right?

Where to watch:

Viki

DramaFever (concluding next week after a 2-week delay)

New K-Drama Alert: She Was Pretty

Via

Am I the only one who has been longing for a new drama cycle? I'm in love with Twenty Again, but every other show on the air right now is making me roll my eyes and yawn at the same time.

I just watched the web series Noble, My Love out of sheer desperation for something fun and mindless (because that's what web series do best). It was both of those things, but it also took every single sexist trope that has ever bothered me in a K-drama male lead and put them into one (admittedly handsome) character. Dear Sung Hoon, if you flatly refuse to wear a shirt, I will happily use it to strangle your domineering character. But I digress.

Speaking of terrible male leads, let's talk about the first entry in the upcoming drama cycle — She Was Pretty.


Premise: Kim Hye Jin (Hwang Jung Eum) was pretty and poised as a child, but loss of fortune and some unkind puberty turn her into an unattractive (read: frizzy hair and too much blush) and noisy mess. Ji Sung Joon (Park Seo Joon) was Hye Jin's first love, an overweight, awkward child who grows up to be a handsome, accomplished magazine editor. A series of events (aka FATE) leads them to work in the same office, but Sung Joon no longer recognizes Hye Jin.

Episodes watched so far: 4

Thoughts so far: Ummmmmm I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but there are some major red flags in the first few episodes.

Neither am I, Sung Joon. Neither am I.

Let me start by saying that I found Park Seo Joon enchanting in Witch's Romance, so I really hoped to love him in this role.

Too bad his character is the pits.

I know, I know. He's a K-drama male lead, so what did I expect? Of course he's going to be coldhearted and cruel for the first few episodes, and then we'll find out that something terrible happened to him in America and that's why he goes around telling presumable strangers that they are too ugly and awkward to deserve the same name as his first love.

The problem isn't the type of character so much as the handling of that character so far. As Oh My Ghostess so recently illustrated, it's possible to have a jerk boss character who is also empathetic and multifaceted from episode one. I don't feel that way about Sung Joon, however. Instead of seeing a softer side to him in his sweet scenes with Ha Ri, I mostly just find those scenes annoying. How dare you treat everyone with contempt and then turn around and pretend to be sweet and charming to the girl you assume is your first love? It comes off as fake, and it kind of makes me not care about hearing his inevitable sob story.

Unfortunately, Hwang Jung Eum's character isn't exactly a shining beacon of character depth. I find it interesting that she called herself a supporting character because that's is exactly how she has been written so far. A caricature is okay as a secretary, but it's not ideal to carry a show. Hwang Jung Eum needs a director who can tone down her over-the-top histrionics, but it feels like, if anything, the writer and director are encouraging her to dial up the crazy even more.

Sorry, but if I were her boss, I would definitely fire her for trying to pull down my pants on the second day of work.

It's not all doom and gloom on the show, however! I'm pretty sure the amount of time it took me to catch a massive case of Second Lead Syndrome for Siwon's goofy reporter (and probably chaebol in disguise) must be some kind of record. Yeah, his character is a little zany too, but his brand of zany actually makes me like Hye Jin more when they're together.

The same can be said for Go Joon Hee as Ha Ri, Hye Jin's best friend. Even if she isn't Sung Joon's actual first love, that pairing has much more chemistry than our OTP does so far. I also love having a second female who isn't a terrible person, giving us one of the better female friendships I've seen on a drama in a while.

I know that the entire premise of this series revolves around First Love That Must Be Fate, but this is a rare case where I feel that the show could really benefit from carrying the B pairings to the end. Siwon's Shin Hyuk sees Hye Jin in a way that Sung Joon doesn't. He doesn't need the inevitable makeover or the fateful pull of first love to make him appreciate her for who she is. Similarly, Sung Joon and Ha Ri genuinely seem to enjoy being together right now, in the present. Why not just go for something different and give us the pairings that already work?

Why do I love you so much, Siwon? Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy?

I'm still hopeful that I'll end up eating my words and that the show can turn things around, but for now, I'm bracing myself to sob over Siwon's sad dimples until the end of time.


Where to watch:
Viki
DramaFever (premiering 9/30 with a 2-week delay)