Business Proposal

Business Proposal is a 2022 South Korean television series that aired on SBS from February 28 to April 5, 2022. Its 12 episodes were released internationally on Netflix, helping the drama reach viewers beyond its domestic broadcast. The series adapts HaeHwa’s web novel and the webtoon adaptation illustrated by Narak, which was published on KakaoPage. Park Seon-ho directed the drama from scripts by Han Seol-hee and Hong Bo-hee. Rather than treating a blind date as a one-off mishap, Business Proposal builds its central comic premise around the escalating consequences of one deliberately disastrous meeting between an employee and her company’s chief executive.

Kim Se-jeong plays Shin Ha-ri, a food researcher at the fictional Go Food company. At the request of her wealthy friend Jin Young-seo, Ha-ri takes Young-seo’s place on a blind date and performs an intentionally outrageous persona. Her date is Kang Tae-moo, the company’s chief executive officer, played by Ahn Hyo-seop. Tae-moo is under pressure from his grandfather, Kang Da-goo, to marry, and he initially decides to propose to the first woman he meets through the arranged-date process. Ha-ri’s deception becomes harder when Tae-moo recognizes her as an employee and insists that she continue posing as his prospective fiancée in

front of his family and business associates. The charade gives the show its workplace and family comedy, but it also connects the leads through repeated encounters at Go Food. Tae-moo eventually learns that Ha-ri is the woman behind the date, while Ha-ri must deal with the risk that their relationship could affect her job. The second romance centers on Young-seo, portrayed by Seol In-ah, and Cha Sung-hoon, Tae-moo’s chief secretary, played by Kim Min-kyu. Young-seo is the daughter of a chaebol family and seeks to escape her father’s control; Sung-hoon grew up in an orphanage supported by Tae-moo’s grandfather. Their

relationship develops alongside Ha-ri and Tae-moo’s and provides a distinct storyline about class expectations and family obligation. Business Proposal also features Choi Byung-chan as Ha-ri’s brother Min-woo and Lee Deok-hwa as Kang Da-goo. The drama’s commercial setting is used for specific plot devices, including Ha-ri’s work on Go Food products and Tae-moo’s public role as its exacting leader. Its compact twelve-episode format, maintained for its entire original run, distinguishes it from many longer Korean weekday dramas. In South Korea, the finale recorded a nationwide Nielsen Korea rating of 11.4 percent, making it the series’ highest reported audience figure during its original broadcast.