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Pierce Conran

2.5/5 stars
Lead cast: Han Ji-min, Lee Joon-hyuk, Kim Do-hoon, Kim Yoon-hye
Latest Nielsen rating: 12 per cent
During Love Scout’s run, a term used to describe its male lead has continually cropped up online: “unicorn man”.
Though the term has occasionally been used before, this show has made it more mainstream – because Yu Eun-ho, the male lead character, played by Lee Joon-hyuk (Dongjae, the Good or the Bastard), so perfectly fits the bill.
To explain what a unicorn man is, one need only look at the Korean title of the series – “My Perfect Secretary”.


Eun-ho’s unicorn man is an evolution of K-drama leading man stereotypes, like the “chaebol oppa” – handsome and perfect heirs of family-run corporations – which themselves have their roots in perfect male literary stereotypes, such as the Prince Charmings commonly found in fairy tales or Disney films.
What makes Eun-ho different is that his attractive attributes have been modernised; while his personality may be fanciful, his position in society and his social circumstances are not.
What makes him a more modern K-drama protagonist is that the usual superciliousness associated with male leads is gone here.
He is handsome, well dressed and eminently skilled, but he doesn’t have a hint of arrogance about him and is always there to serve and protect the women in his life, which here includes his chief executive boss, female lead Kang Ji-yoon (Han Ji-min, Our Blues) – who very slowly warms to him – and the young daughter he is raising alone.

Nor does he have traits typically associated with the Japanese term tsundere, which describes male leads who are cold on the outside but secretly caring. Eun-ho is innately and immediately caring, but with the tact to be so at enough of a distance as not to make Ji-yun uncomfortable.
To use another recently coined term, he can also be described as a “green flag male lead”, the red flags of toxic masculinity having been carefully shorn from his personality.
At the outset of the show, Eun-ho and Ji-yoon first met while he was working at another company, where he was trying to convince an executive not to take a job offered him by Ji-yun, who runs the headhunting company Peoplez.
Despite being rivals, Eun-ho goes out of his way to be kind towards the frosty Ji-yoon, including helping her down a mountain at night.

Soon after, Eun-ho is unfairly dismissed and soon takes up the thankless task of being Ji-yoon’s personal secretary. No one has ever lasted long in the post, not just because Ji-yoon is driven and exacting, but because she seems incapable of sparing a thought for her employees.
These challenges are but a trifle for unicorn male Eun-ho, who deftly navigates all of Ji-yoon’s foibles, anticipates all her problems, streamlines her work, and still finds time to be a perfect single father, cooking incredible meals for his daughter, in addition to being a prince to everyone else around him.
He even leaves drinks outside his apartment as a thank you to hard-working delivery drivers.
Thanks to Eun-ho’s brilliance, Love Scout began brightly and engaged us while we waited for the penny to drop. His perfection is entertaining to begin with, but he needs to have flaws of some description if we’re to accept him as a character until the end.

But the penny never dropped. Eun-ho is completely perfect and doesn’t challenge us in any way. Despite his relatively normal job and home life, he is even more of a fantasy figure than the heirs and celebrities that often populate K-dramas.
What makes him so drawn to Ji-yoon? Despite the impossible level of care, consideration and affection he showers on her, she pushes him back, even after accepting him. But she is safe in her constant retreats because she knows that Eun-ho will never leave. We know this because he says so: “I will wait for you.”
Forget unrealistic expectations, those are par for the course for romantic dramas; the problem with Love Scout’s central romance is that it is impossible to understand.
Ji-yoon is a protagonist whose flaws are supposed to represent our own. We love to see flawed characters achieve their desires, but they need to make an effort to earn those desires to sell the story.

Love Scout foregrounds a female protagonist who does little to earn what she subsequently receives.
She eventually gets the names of her long-suffering employees right and at one point helps Eun-ho’s sad daughter by dressing her up in the most ornate princess costume and giving her the most ostentatious present to bring to a little girl’s birthday party – an act which foregrounds the show’s shallow and exaggerated princess tropes.
Ultimately, who needs a Prince Charming when you have a Unicorn Man?
Love Scout is streaming on Netflix.


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Lee Joon-hyuk plays the implausibly perfect secretary to Han Ji-min’s CEO, and eventually her lover. Yet she has done nothing to deserve him


Lee Joon-hyuk plays the implausibly perfect secretary to Han Ji-min’s CEO, and eventually her lover. Yet she has done nothing to deserve him.


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.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Lee Joon-hyuk plays the implausibly perfect secretary to Han Ji-min’s CEO, and eventually her lover. Yet she has done nothing to deserve him

Lee Joon-hyuk plays the implausibly perfect secretary to Han Ji-min’s CEO, and eventually her lover. Yet she has done nothing to deserve him