SPOILER WARNING: DO NOT READ IF YOU STILL PLAN ON WATCHING THIS SERIES OR HAVEN’T FINISHED IT YET!!

My Mister
(나의 아저씨 / Naui Ajussi)
MyDramaList rating: 7.5/10

Hello! It’s been a while!
I took my time watching this drama because of the slow pace of the story and the length of the episodes. While there are only 16 episodes, every episode has a duration of at least one and a half hours, so I couldn’t get myself to watch it all in one go. It was very different from the usual K-Drama and I will share my thoughts on how and what. T
he reason why this drama was on my list was mostly because of IU. I’m a bit of a fan of her as a singer, and ever since Moon Lovers: Scarlet Heart Ryeo, I’ve become determined to follow her progress in acting as well. I think she’s really growing as an actress and I will keep watching her new dramas that come out.

First of all, the story. The story of My Mister is about Park Dong Hoon (played by Lee Sun Kyun), who is the manager of the Safety Inspection department at a structural engineering company called Saman E&C. He was moved to this department even though he has great skills to be an actual engineer. The person responsible for his transfer is CEO Do Joon Young (played by Kim Young Min), who also happens to be Dong Hoon’s junior from university. Dong Hoon has trouble respecting him, not only because he is and younger and higher in rank, but he just doesn’t like him.
Do Joon Young, who doesn’t like Dong Hoon either is in the meantime having an affair with Dong Hoon’s wife Kang Yoon Hee (played by Lee Ji Ah). Do Joon Young is trying to get Dong Hoon fired.
Then there is contract worker Lee Ji An (IU, Lee Ji Eun), a very unsociable and gloomy girl who works as a temp in Dong Hoon’s department, handling the receipts. She doesn’t get along with anyone at work and is often seen displaying even rude behavior. From what we learn about her personal life, she’s taking care of her sickly grandma while hiding from loan sharks. One of these loan sharks, Lee Kwang Il (played by Jang Ki Yong) is especially persistent. They share a connection to a dark past Ji An is eager to forget.
One day, Dong Hoon gets a package at work that was mistakenly delivered to him instead of his Director Park Dong Woon (subtle name difference). It’s an envelope filled with money. After receiving this, he unwillingly gets himself involved in a plot within his company, mainly led by Do Joon Young and his superiors. Ji An witnesses him getting the money and steals it, therefore also involving herself.
What follows is a story about complicated relations in which Ji An first allies with Do Joon Young to keep tabs on Dong Hoon and helps getting him fired, but while doing so she discovers what a kind man Dong Hoon is and starts wanting to support him.
Besides all the tensions at work, Dong Hoon also has to make do with his family, his mother and his two brothers Sang Hoon (played by Park Ho San) and Ki Hoon (Song Sae Byuk) who also have their own troubles in life and different personalities.

There are a lot of different characters in this drama, and what I liked about it is that despite the actual things happening in the storyline, it’s actually about people in general. All different kinds of people, people with different backgrounds, different family relations, different ambitions, different ways to handle things.
Although the pace is really slow and it may not be as interesting or ‘fun’ as a common romantic comedy, it gives a good realistic insight in South-Korean society, the male-dominated work environment, and how people handle their personal feelings of loss, shame and regret. There are many characters who are not happy, but they all deal with it in a different way.
It shows a layer of the middle-class, the people that have to struggle to find their way and make money while always being judged in one way or another by people around them. Another thing I liked about this drama is that it really puts things into perspective. Things or people that may have looked a certain way in the beginning, all turned out to be different.
I would like to list a summary of the double-layeredness of a couple of main characters, dividing them in two groups: men and women.
First, the mean. Starting with Park Dong Hoon.
Dong Hoon is a bit of an unfortunate figure. I would describe him as kind, but very safe (maybe even a bit boring) and a creature of habit, not willing to take risks or needlessly voice his opinions when they go against others with more influence. While he has a kind nature, his tendency to keep things to himself instead of talking to people make it hard to really read him. While he has a good reputation amongst his work team and the skills to be an engineer, he does what the higher-ups ask of him, even if that means being degraded. He keeps out of trouble and keeps his mouth shut rather than stand up for himself. There is also pressure on him because among his brothers he’s the most succesful one in his mother’s eyes, the one with a ‘steady marriage’ and a ‘solid job’. But both is marriage and his job are on the verge of collapse. He’s managed to screw up his own life without even knowing it.
The thing is, Dong Hoon has been in the same neighborhood (Hugye) all his life. He grew up with his brothers and all the guys he or his brothers went to school with are still there. He spends a lot of time with them, hanging out, playing soccer, having a drink at night after work. Yoon Hee very often feels like an outsider from Dong Hoon’s family. She mentions once that she never felt like she was part of the group of people he considers ‘family’ or ‘the people he cares about most’. He always preferred having a drink at the usual bar with the guys rather than coming home early to his wife.
It feels like their 12-year old son who they sent to the United States to study abroad is the only thing still binding them together. They are never shown as an affectionate couple, they don’t even communicate. Whenever Yoon Hee wants to bring something up, Dong Hoon has the tendency to walk away from it. Also, I don’t know if it’s common to save your spouse’s phone number under the name ‘chib saram/house person’, but it feels really distant to me. All in all, this is not a very happy marriage, you don’t even get the feeling that these two people love each other.
When Dong Hoon discovers more about Ji An’s circumstances, it is in his nature to want to help or support her in some way, but at the same time he still keeps his distance. He accepts her demands to buy her a meal and drinks and walks her home, but then he’s like ‘Okay bye’ and leaves immediately. While they don’t share many words, there are visibly a lot of unspoken thoughts they have towards each other and it takes a while for those to come out.
Dong Hoon’s younger brother Ki Hoon is a bit of an eccentric guy. He used to be a film director, and that has always been his calling, but once he cast an actress who couldn’t act for the life of her and she brought him and his reputation down with her. Ever since that project, he’s never been able to make a comeback. After abandoning his dream, he takes over the cleaning company from a school friend together with his oldest brother and they start a cleaning business together – which means they come to apartments and flats and clean the hallways and stuff. One day he meets that actress, Choi Yoo Ra (played by Kwon Na Ra), again, and while she initially annoys the crap out of him, he is gradually drawn to her again. Their relationship is a very interesting one because it continually switches from affectionate to detached. Ki Hoon is very fickle, he lashes out easily and is very hot-headed. When he gets emotional, he tends to take it out on his surroundings and scream it off rather than cry or show his true emotions. He is, as I would call it, the typical ‘aish’ character (you know, the sound Korean people make when they are frustrated). In the end, we do see a sensitive part of him, but this part is only unlocked once he genuinely gets involved with Yoo Ra. He really loves her, at the end, even though he still feels like they are not compatible and she, as a growing celebrity, should be ashamed of having a cleaner as a lover. However, in the very last episode, he does turn a switch and starts writing a new film scenario.
Dong Hoon’s oldest brother Sang Hoon is perceived to be kind of the failure of the family. While he’s almost fifty, he still lives with his mother after getting a divorce from his wife Jo Ae Ryun (played by Jung Young Joo – I only mention her by name because I personally love this actress, she didn’t have a very big role here). He loves drinking more than anything and despite his age acts the most childishly of all three brothers.
However, there is a sincerity to his character. While he usually keeps quiet during confrontations, he really cares about his younger brothers and in his own immature way keeps trying to get them back on track. For example, when Ki Hoon is struggling with his feelings for Yoo Ra, Sang Hoon is always there to give him a push or a nudge in the right direction. Usually in a way that annoys Ki Hoon but still gives him the final urge to take action.
I have to say that many of the scenes between Sang Hoon and Ki Hoon were very comical and enjoyable to watch. You could see that while the three brothers are so different in their approaches, they still care a lot about each other and always have each other’s backs. When one time Dong Hoon is beaten up by Kwang Il and his brothers find out, Ki Hoon starts running around the neighborhood, screaming about killing the person that did this to his brother.
Since the poster shows all three brothers I figured that from the start they would play a big role, but in the beginning I was a bit confused in what exactly was there role in the story. In the beginning they just seemed like two immature brothers compared to Dong Hoon, but they really did show layers to their character and it became clear what kind of pillars they were to Dong Hoon as well.
Do Joon Young seems to have fewer layers, in contrast to the others’ duality he is mostly depicted as the bad guy. He is younger than Dong Hoon, and this created friction because there are clear rules in how to behave towards people that are older and younger than yourself. So it doesn’t feel right for Dong Hoon to show the same respect to Joon Young than for his older superiors, for isntance. Also, because he’s sleeping with Yoon Hee, he feels like he has some extra power over Dong Hoon and he starts acting cocky. It seems like he just wants to get rid of Dong Hoon because he doesn’t like him or because he has the power over him to do it.
While he acts kindly to Yoon Hee, once the truth comes out about their affair and Yoon Hee hears a recording in which he states the reasons for having an affair with a married woman, she ends things with him and he suddenly switches back to his cold attitude. He asks Ji An to keep tabs on Dong Hoon and report to him anything she finds out that may give him reason to fire or humiliate him.
We only see one side of Joon Young, the young businessman primarily concerned with his own reputation and ambition, kissing up to his superiors and not looking down.

Before I go on with the women, since I am at this part, I will summarize briefly the exact events that happen at the company, the whole thing that Dong Hoon and Ji An get involved in.
It’s like this, there is a plot going on among the superiors that wish to very subtly let go of people they don’t really like. Do Joon Young and another director that’s always kissing up to him are forging plans to create excuses to fire people. Their first victim is Director Park Dong Woon. They order a delivery of 50 million won (or something like that) to be brought to him at the office, supposedly to ‘keep something quiet’. Once that would be found out, he’d be put into jeopardy. However, due to a mistake from the delivery guy, the envelope with money is brought to Park Dong Hoon. It’s shown that he’s mistakenly been getting letters from Park Dong Woon before because their names are so similar. When he gets the envelope, Dong Hoon is hesitant to speak out and keeps it in a drawer under his desk. He catched Ji An looking at him while he does it.
That same night, with the help of a acquaintance who works as a cleaner at the company, Ji An manages to cause a blackout and sneaks in and out to steal the money from the drawer. She then throws it out in the trash.
The next morning, Dong Hoon finds the envelope missing and gets anxious, all the more when inspectors come to fetch him at his office to ask about the money. Instead of telling the truth about not knowing what it’s all about, Dong Hoon decides not to say anything, causing him to become very suspicious (I personally didn’t understand why he kept his mouth shut there, he should’ve just made clear he had nothing to do with it).
The next moment, Ji An’s acquaintance brings the envelope to the inspectors, claiming he found it in the trash – this clears Dong Hoon for the time being, because at least he didn’t use it. Park Dong Woon is also informed about the happenings with the envelope and means to form an alliance with Dong Hoon, because they are both victims now of some plot.
In the meantime Ji An corresponds with Do Joon Young, and agrees to help get both Dong Hoon and Director Park fired, for a reward of 10 million won per person. She finds an opportunity to install a wire tap on Dong Hoon’s phone and starts listening in to all his conversations, both at work in secret and at home with his family.
She overhears him talking with the Director about plans to go to Sokcho, and with the help of another friend she manages to follow Director Park Dong Woon and get him so drunk he ends up in a taxi to Sokcho while he actually has an important meeting with Chinese people at the airport the next morning. Because he misses this meeting, he loses the Chinese clients and is put on probation for work. His office is taken over by the creepy Director who’s on Do Joon Young’s side.
With the money she gets for getting Park Dong Woon fired, Ji An pays off a part of her loan to the loansharks, but it’s still not enough. The next part is getting Dong Hoon fired, but while Ji An tries several things including seducing him, as she listens to his recordings and as he does more nice things for her and her grandma, she starts sympathizing with him. He becomes someone to her that she can rely on, someone who teaches her things she never knew. Ji An has never had any parental figures, so she doesn’t know a lot about life, even though she acts so tough and independent. For example, she kidnaps her grandma from her care facility because she can’t pay the bills anymore even though there is a rule that when there’s no direct family left to pay, het grandma can stay at a facility for free (or something like that). Since Ji An’s parents both passed away when she was little, she is eligible to apply for this care, but she doesn’t know about it until Dong Hoon tells her about it. This is a moment where we see that Ji An really is still a child inside, fighting the world on her own.
In the end, she turns against Do Joon Young and exposes his affair with Dong Hoon’s wife. Yoon Hee, while of course initially victim of this exposure, is a lawyer, and still decides to help Ji An’s case.
In the end, Dong Hoon and his whole ‘team’ help clear Ji An’s name, take care of her grandmother and make sure she can live comfortably. When her grandmother passes away, they make sure there is food and flower arrangements at the altar and she’s able to be cremated properly at a crematorium. Dong Hoon helps Ji An get back on her feet and Ji An helps Dong Hoon in her own way as well, she gets him to open up more and they promise each other to live happily from now on. The recordings she has on Do Joon Young are turned in to the police and he is dismissed from the office, just like his follower director. Park Dong Woon is reinstated.
Some years later, Dong Hoon and Ji An meet again and she is now a full-fledged employee, looking healthy and having lunch with work friends. Dong Hoon also becomes more cheerful and less brooding.
The relationship between the two is hard to define, but in the end they both needed each other to get out of their dark lives. They both showed each other how to live properly again.

Now I will continue with the summaries about the women in the story.
First of all, Lee Ji An herself. She’s suffered an unfortunate childhood – her parents died in an accident when she was still in elementary school and there was no-one who wanted to take her in. In the end, an elderly man (the cleaner guy from Dong Hoon’s family) started taking care of her as a grandpa figure. Ji An’s grandmother Lee Bong Ae (preciously played by Son Sook) is deaf and can only communicate through sign language. It turns out that Ji An’s parents, when they died, had an ongoing debt with a loan company called Youngkwang Loans. When they passed, this debt was automatically transferred to the remaining family. The director of this loan company was a very brutal man who assaulted Ji An’s grandmother when they weren’t paying their loans in time. One time, in a spur of despair and anger, Ji An killed this loan shark. This man was Kwang Il’s father. Even though Kwang Il used to be nice to Ji An and even possibly liked her/cared for her (he would carry her on his back home when his father had hit her), after what she did to his father he’s become a different person. He suddenly took over his father’s manic way of handling things and starts pestering Ji An, even beating her up himself. He is extra obsessed with not letting her get away because of what she did to his father. However, at the end of the series he gets his hands on Ji An’s recordings and hears the things she says about him, about how he used to be, and this seems to have a mysterious impact on him, causing him to still turn in the recordings to the police in the end and showing a good side of himself.
In any case, Ji An and Kwang Il have a special history together and it seems like she also can’t forget about how he used to be and that’s why she doesn’t just seem to hate him. There’s still a side to him that she feels like she knows and therefore can’t fully hate him.
She loves her grandmother the most, she is the only family she has left and the scene when she has to come see her body after she passed away was heartbreaking. Excellent acting from IU, it brought tears to my eyes as well. We’ve seen Ji An cry by herself before, but this is the first time she cries in front of other people, in front of Dong Hoon, and this marks a moment where she stops hiding her emotions from other people.
Ji An is a very complicated character, she starts out as the kind of person you’d rather not talk to in the office because she’s always rude and unsociable, but it turns out that it’s just a cover of how lonely and troubled she is. She’s been damaged a lot, carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders all by herself, never having anyone to support her fully. That’s why she first only cares about money. But after meeting Dong Hoon and learning about this relationships with his family, she starts seeing the light again. It’s a very gradual process and therefore very natural and realistic. What’s realistic about her is that whatever she does, she’s still human and still young, making stupid mistakes sometimes, not really aware of what’s she’s getting herself into. She learns how to trust people again.
Then there’s Yoon Hee, Dong Hoon’s wife. She’s a lawyer, and a very mature and smart woman. While she’s having an affair, she still keeps on trying to be warm to Dong Hoon, even when she gets nothing in return.
Yoon Hee is one of the characters that put things in perspective for me. You would think you’d automatically dislike her for having an affair with her husband’s boss, because Dong Hoon is the protagonist/good guy and he doesn’t deserve this and people who cheat are always in the wrong.
Still I really sympathized with Yoon Hee. I mean, I wouldn’t be able to take it that long with a husband who never told me anything. Even when he finds out that he might get promoted at work, he doesn’t even tell her. She has to find out through his mother. Yoon Hee has always felt like she didn’t belong in Dong Hoon’s circle of ‘family/people closest to him’. She felt left out, an outsider. So pardon me if I understand why she’d get tired of him.
There were times when I was really frustrated with Dong Hoon for being so tight-lipped, even towards the people closest to him. Even though I can understand his feelings too, maybe as a woman I couldn’t blame Yoon Hee. I actually liked her character. While having the affair, she still stood up for her husband, asking Do Joon Young not to be too brutal to him. She thought it would be a good thing for Dong Hoon to quit this company for his own good, because he was capable of so much more. And when the news of their affair came out, she genuinely apologized to Dong Hoon and honestly tried to make amends. In the end they still sort of made up and kept living together, treating each other a little better than before.
Choi Yoo Ra was one of the most interesting characters to me. While only being a side character and Ki Hoon’s love interest, the things she said were really interesting. Her whole concept of wanting to be an actress while not being able to act and constantly getting screamed at by directors, causing her to get depressed and drained occasionally before turning up as a cheerfully smiling girlfriend again the next day. She is clearly unstable, and still very much childlike, even though being mid-30. She cries when she gets yelled at, when she feels down she automatically goes to find a person she likes to get comfort (although in her case, this is Ki Hoon and he sends her away almost every single time). She’s bad with criticism, and wants to be complimented, but it’s not easy for her to keep standing her ground. However, partly because of Ki Hoon’s strict peptalks, she does end up regaining her positive reputation through a movie and in her own way, also inspires Ki Hoon to start writing a new film script, even though they’re already broken up at that point. I’m not really sure what it is, but I thought she brought a nice fresh and original character to the story.
Lastly, I need to mention Jung Hee. Jung Hee owns the bar where Dong Hoon and his brothers and their friends usually hang out and have drinks. I wasn’t really sure what exactly her relationship was with all of them but I take it she’s just another old school friend of them as well. She used to be together with a friend of Dong Hoon’s, who then decided to leave her and his succesfully potential life behind to become a monk.
Jung Hee is devastated by his leaving, but she masks this with a casual and cheerful way of being. She enjoys the company of people, as soon as she’s alone she starts crying. She’s deeply hurt and can’t get over being abandoned by her man, but she deals with her hurt in a unique way, unlike anyone else. She jokes about it, keeping it light and casual, while still not completely hiding the pain that’s underneath. When Dong Hoon brings in Ji An when she’s on the run, Jung Hee immediately lets her stay at her place and makes her feel at home. She hides her grief when she’s around other people by bringing out her warm and hospitable side in tenfold.
As you can see in these summaries, every single character has something he or she is not happy about, but they all deal with it in different ways. It was very interesting to see such a great variety of humanity in one drama with a fairly simple storyline.

I would like to comment on the cast a bit more before my final feedback.
First of all, I knew Lee Sung Kyun only from 1st Shop of Coffee Prince (my first ever Korean Drama), which is from 12 years ago. It was funny to see him in such a different role so many years later. I think he performed very well, with very much integrity, the role of a simple guy who just wished to have a normal life. He didn’t stand out, talked under his breath in a monotone way, trying his best to keep out of trouble as much as he could. But at the same way he has this kind face which really showed his oblivion to his surroundings. He was very well casted for this role I think.
What can I say about IU, I think she’s really growing as an actress. With every new role I see of her, she’s expanding in variety and energy. It was very interesting to see her in such a low-energy role, but it made the moments where she’d lash out even more powerful. My compliments.
I hadn’t seen Park Ho San or Song Sae Byuk before, but I really liked their energy in this drama. Sometimes they were so ridiculously immature for mid-40 people, and in other ways their simplicity was just really human.
I was surprised to see Lee Ji Ah here and I really liked her in this drama. I’ve only seen one other drama with her, Me Too Flower, and there she was the main character but she didn’t make any impression on me whatsoever. I did immediately recognize her but I checked twice to make sure she was the same actress because she looked so much more mature here, like a different person. Her whole energy and screen presence was different and I think as an actor that’s really admirable.
I have seen Kim Young Min before in Fantastic, where he played a despicable guy but with a more hysterical energy, so it was nice to see him as a composed but calculating CEO.
I knew Kwon Na Ra from Suspicious Partner, where she also played an entirely different character.
All in all, I saw a lot of different sides to actors I’ve seen before and therefore also wish to compliment this drama for being a platform for actors to give them new characters and new ways of acting. It’s so important to give actors variety, and not keep typecasting them for the same kind of roles. This unfortunately still keeps happening a lot in dramas.

Lastly I wish to give special compliments to Jang Ki Yong, I’ve only seen this guy a couple of times before, he was a really nice second male lead in Go Back Couple for instance, but this is the first time I’ve seen him in such a manic and occasionally scary role as Kwang Il. Dangerous, but still layered and I still felt like there was more to him and just a threatening loan shark. Although I do have to say I have a weak spot for guys like this in K-Dramas (Kim Woo Bin ruined me in The Heirs).
And last but not least, grandmother Lee Bong Ae. She was the most fragile and precious grandma ever, even though partly aware (I think) of the life her granddaughter was living, she kept embracing her, kept telling her to be happy.
In the last scene where she is alive, in the last episode, she signs to Ji An the following sentence:
If you take the time to think about it, each and every interpersonal relationship is quite fascinating and precious.’
I’d say this one sentence sums up the whole entirety of the series.

Even though it took me a while to get into the series because of the slow pace and lack of real action in the beginning, I would still say it was a good watch. It was a different kind of drama than I’m used to watching, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t like it. In its own way, it was very informative for me, I learned a lot about Korean society. Of course there were things I didn’t agree with, such as the way women were treated both on the workfloor and in general, they still remained to be the ones who should stay out of the guys’ business and stay home, keep quiet. Women will always partly remain underestimated and undervalued in some societies, and this is a shame. But I was still happy to see the strong sides of the female characters in this series. They still rose above themselves and learned how to get on from grief and self-pity. Sometimes it’s better to forget, sometimes it’s better to forgive. It depends on the person. We just have to find our own way in life and surround ourselves with the people we care about the most.
Also, the male-dominated industry where it’s all about ranks and who is higher than who and who needs to be respectful towards whom sometimes felt really nonsensical. But as I said, it was interesting to see this kind of cultural aspects of Korean society.
There are always second chances for people who’ve given up on themselves, and sometimes another person can be the doorway to that possibility. But it’s most important that you grant yourself the chance and the right to be happy.
This drama contains a lot of lessons. Even though I still prefer dramas that make my heart beat faster and make me want to watch it in one go, it was a nice change. The acting was good, the writing was good, the messages were good. I wouldn’t call it ‘fun’ or ‘nice’, but I would certainly say it was ‘good’.

I will now go back to more fiction and romance, it took me almost three hours to write this review and I’m up for something light again.
Keep you posted!