Business Proposal

Business Proposal (Korean: 사내맞선) is a South Korean romantic comedy television series based on the web novel of the same title written by HaeHwa. Directed by Park Seon-ho and written by Han Seol-hee and Hong Bo-hee, it stars Ahn Hyo-seop, Kim Se-jeong, Kim Min-kyu, and Seol In-ah. It tells the story of Shin Ha-ri, an employee who accepts to go on a blind date in place of her friend, but finds out that her date is actually her boss. The series aired for 12 episodes on SBS TV every Monday and Tuesday at 22:00 (KST) from February 28 to April 5, 2022. It is also available for streaming on Netflix in selected regions.
Shin Ha-ri (Kim Se-jeong) goes on a blind date after she agrees to replace her friend, Jin Young-seo (Seol In-ah), whose father had arranged it. The plan is to have Ha-ri 'getting rejected' by her prospective partner. However, it goes awry when her date turns out to be Kang Tae-moo (Ahn Hyo-seop), CEO of Go Food, the company where Ha-ri works. Tae-moo, who is being pressured by his grandfather Kang Da-goo (Lee Deok-hwa), the chairman of Go Food's parent company, to go on blind dates with suitable marriage partners, decides to marry his blind date partner to avoid going on the rest of the dates, without knowing she is the fake Jin Young-seo or that she is his employee, which she assiduously tries to hide. However, Ha-ri's fake identity, but thankfully not her employment status, is soon exposed after the real Jin Young-seo confesses to Kang Tae-moo of 'hiring' an actress to impersonate her on her blind date with Tae-moo. She meets Cha Sung-hoon (Kim Min-kyu) during her exchange with Kang Tae-moo, and finds out that Sung-hoon is Tae-moo's secretary.
After Ha-ri's identity is exposed, Young-seo tricks Ha-ri into meeting with Tae-moo at his request. When he asks for her real name, Ha-ri lies and says that her name is Shin Geum-hui (the same name as the female lead of a popular fictional television series Be Strong, Geum-hui (Korean: 굳세어라 금희야).) to hide that she is his employee. Tae-moo bullies and bribes Ha-ri into pretending to be his fiancée in exchange for a payment of 800,000 won per date after his grandfather threatens to send him on countless blind dates. The cash-strapped Ha-ri desperately needs the money to bail out her consistently impecunious parents, so she accepts. During the course of fake dating, Ha-ri uses her new identity alongside a fake background, created for her by Tae-moo and Sunghoon, to make a good first impression on Tae-moo's grandfather. While the relationship starts out frosty and uncomfortable, the couple soon grows closer until Tae-moo finds out Ha-ri's real identity. Despite feeling betrayed, Tae-moo still loves Ha-ri and they later became a couple as he told Ha-ri he knew the truth of her identity.
Meantime, Young-seo moves out of her father's house to escape his demands to attend blind dates and finds out, in a comic moment involving a marauding cockroach, that she is now Sung-hoon's neighbor, the man with whom she had become infatuated at first sight after meeting him at a convenience store. While Young-seo is attracted to him, Sung-hoon is upset with her for deceiving his boss, so he constantly tries to avoid her. Still, he cannot further deny his growing affections for Young-seo when he realizes it eventually, and they get together.
Business Proposal was initially released as a web novel on KakaoPage between 2017 and 2018 by writer HaeHwa, who gained a following since his debut as a writer in 2012 for the "unconventional" themes of his romance novels. His stories mostly focus on the emotional growth of women who were hurt by their families and how they healed from their wounds. The novels also deal with the difficulty of becoming independent from parents in South Korea. Regarding Business Proposal, HaeHwa said he wrote it "with the mindset that it's easy to read, the content is lively and it's good to make it into a web comic", therefore taking a more classical approach to the romance genre, while still making the main character Shin Ha-ri an "independent" woman. The web novel went viral, reaching a total of 450 million views worldwide, including 160 million in South Korea alone, by the end of February 2022. Due to its early popularity, it was subsequently released as a webtoon developed by illustrator Narak in 2018.
The series was created by StudioS, co-written by Han Seol-hee and Hong Bo-hee, directed by Park Seon-ho and co-produced by Kross Pictures and Kakao Entertainment. The series was director Park Seon-ho's first project as a freelancer after leaving SBS. Park admitted that he had concerns about how to explain Kang Tae-moo's inability to tell the difference between Shin Ha-ri and Shin Geum-hui, the fictitious identity Ha-ri uses to disguise herself. He and his team then decided to introduce new scenes, such as Ha-ri trying to avoid eye contact with Tae-moo and the chase scene with her slipper, an allusion to Cinderella, to "make the flow more natural and the story more realistic". Additional changes included highlighting Ha-ri's competence at her job to emphasize "that Tae-moo would be unable to match Ha-ri and Geum-hui because of his strong impression". Screenwriter Han Seol-hee, better known for her work on comedy series, affirmed that what sets Business Proposal aside from other "contract marriages" storylines is its "unique sense of humour". She considers it the most important element and, as a result, Han said she placed less importance on the chemistry of the characters in order to keep the focus on the jokes while writing the script.
Between March and May 2021, media reported that Ahn Hyo-seop and Kim Se-jeong had received offers to appear in the television series and were considering them. In the second half of 2021, Kakao Entertainment confirmed the casting of both actors, while Seol In-ah and Kim Min-kyu's respective agencies announced that they both would star on the show. Over the next few months, Kim Kwang-kyu, Jung Young-joo and Yoon Sang-jeong were cast in supporting roles, while screenwriter Han Seol-hee directly recommended Kim Hyun-sook, with whom she had previously worked on Ugly Miss Young-ae. On January 18, 2022, photos of the script reading were released. Some of the filming locations for the drama include Yongin Daejanggeum Park, Heyri Art Valley and the 1004 Yacht in Sinan County.
The series was originally scheduled to be released on February 21, 2022. However, the filming schedule changed due to COVID-19 and the premiere date was postponed for a week to February 28, 2022. Business Proposal aired on SBS TV for 12 episodes every Monday and Tuesday at 22:00 (KST) till April 5, 2022. The series was also released on Netflix in selected regions on February 21, 2022.
A special episode consisting of popular scenes from the first six episodes was broadcast on March 19, 2022, with commentary from the main cast.
The soundtrack album for Business Proposal, coordinated and written by music director Park Se-joon, includes 12 songs, of which ten were previously released as singles throughout the drama's airing, and 23 score pieces. Notably, the album features pieces by Seo Jae-ha, Kim Young-seong and Han Jun. It was digitally released on April 6, 2022, after the ending of the series. Pre-orders for the physical version started on March 28, 2022, and the album was officially released on April 19.
The album peaked at number 11 on the Gaon Album Chart and as of April 2022, 14,499 copies have been sold.
Ten singles were released from the album from February 28 to April 3, 2022. "Sweet" by Lee Mu-jin was the first single to be released and it peaked at number 169 on the Gaon Digital Chart. A special track, "Love, Maybe", written and sung by MeloMance was released on February 18, before the drama's airing. The song was commercially successful, debuting on the Gaon Digital Chart at number 148 and peaking at number four. It also peaked at number six on Billboard's K-pop Hot 100. On April 4, 2022, lead actress Kim Se-jeong shared a clip of her and co-star Ahn Hyo-seop singing the song together, which went viral on Twitter. The next day, an acoustic version of "Love, Maybe" sung by Kim was released as a bonus track. The track peaked at number 108 on the Gaon Digital Chart.
During its airing, Business Proposal almost doubled its television ratings, recording its highest rating in the ninth episode. According to Nielsen Korea, the series recorded a rating of 11.4% in its last episode. It also topped the Content Power Index (CPI) report with 357.7 points in the first week of April 2022. After its release on Netflix, Business Proposal debuted at number 6 on the platform's weekly viewership chart of non-English TV shows in the week of March 7 to 13. The following week it rose to number one, where it stayed for three weeks, recording 32.5 million hours of viewing for the week of March 28 to April 3 alone. It became the first Korean series produced and originally released by a local company to top the chart. The drama was particularly successful in Asia, ranking as the top series in multiple countries including Indonesia, Japan, Thailand, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Philippines and Singapore, while placing at number two in India and Sri Lanka, for the week of March 28 to April 3.
Following the series's success, Kakao Entertainment reported that the webtoon was now the second most popular romantic comic ever released on Kakao's platform, while the views for the original web novel increased tenfold. Furthermore, both held the top two spots for most viewed stories on Kakao's platform during the drama's airing.
Despite the initial concerns of adapting a webtoon into a drama, Business Proposal received positive feedback for its way of embracing the clichés of the romcom genre and turning them into "slapstick comedy". Quincy LeGardye of Vulture individuated at least ten typical tropes of the romance genre used for either of the two main couples presented in the series and commented that the drama makes "smart decisions" about which to subvert and which to embrace. The familiarity of the story, derived from using common clichés, alongside its "unique and lovely" characters were named the strengths of the series.
The series was also praised for its way of depicting the issue of molka in South Korea. Jin Young-seo becomes a victim of illegal filming when her neighbor places a spy cam in a lamp he gave her as a housewarming gift. While often in fiction the victim reacts "passively" and lets others handle the situation for her, in the series Young-seo reports the crime to the police and brings evidence with her. It's also made clear that the punishment under the current South Korean law for the crime isn't enough through the words of the police officer who Young-seo speaks to. Furthermore, in many television series', the fictional illegal recordings are frequently broadcast, usually showing the woman losing consciousness and sometimes exposing parts of her body. Instead, Business Proposal avoids portraying the situation explicitly. After the incident, Young-seo goes through trauma and, as a result, she isn't able to use public bathrooms for fear of being filmed, showing how difficult it is for victims to overcome the pain. However, some parts were considered "disappointing". With his influence as a second-generation member of a chaebol family, the male main character Kang Tae-moo manages to gather the testimonies of Young-seo's neighbor's other victims and sues him, also buying out the company where he works at and firing him. The woman has to rely on a man at the end, while it "would have left a more pleasant feeling" if she had "avenged" herself. Furthermore, it was criticized how the situation led to Young-seo's romance with Cha Sung-hoon.
ViuTV acquired the rights to remake Business Proposal. Starring Mirror members Anson Lo and Edan Lui, the adaptation will premiere on ViuTV and on the streaming platform Viu on November 27, 2023.