“Romance Is a Bonus Book” (로맨스는 별책부록)

By Jae-Ha Kim
jaehakim.com
March 24, 2019

Cha Eun-Ho (played by Lee Jong-Suk)
Kang Dan-Yi (played by Lee Na-Young) )
Ji Seo-Joon (played by Wi Ha-Joon)
↑Note: Korean names denote the surname followed by the given name.

“Romance is a Bonus Book” was Lee Jong-Suk’s farewell gift to K-Drama fans. Before the last couple episodes aired, Lee enrolled for his mandatory military duty in South Korea. He won’t be discharged for 22 months. So, I savored each episode, not wanting it to end.

Based on the U.S. series, “Younger,” this unusually-titled drama focuses on the dynamics between Kang Dan-Yi and her childhood friend, Cha Eun-Ho. The two met when she was in high school and saved the little boy from getting hurt in an accident. However, she ended up hospitalized for a long period. Feeling indebted to her, he visited her at the hospital every day and ran errands for her. Though he was five years her junior, the two shared a love of comics and reading books together.

Eun-Ho’s crush never went away. Not on Dan-Yi’s wedding day. And not after he learns she has been secretively living in his house, to make ends meet.

What?

A little back story. Once she and her husband became parents, Dan-Yi quit her job as a big shot in marketing and advertising. She was happy to stay home with their daughter. But when her husband announced he didn’t love her anymore and wanted a divorce, she was left without any income to pay the mortgage or their daughter’s boarding school tuition in the Philippines.

By the way, their daughter is played by the plucky Lee Ji-Won — who was so good as Kang Ye-bin in “Sky Castle.” Unfortunately, hers was more of a cameo here than anything else. It was a plot device concocted by the scriptwriters to show how desperately Dan-Yi needed a job…but without interfering with her love life.

By this point, we already know that her cheating ex-husband had never been worthy of her. A man who refuses to support his unemployed ex-wife is one thing. But a father who abandons his child is an utter failure as a human being.

Dan-Yi knows it won’t be easy getting a job, but with her college degree from a prestigious university and her previous work experience, she assumes she’ll be able to land a decent position. What she learns is that her time away from the business world has made her unemployable. She is overqualified to take an entry-level position. And companies don’t want to hire her for jobs she is qualified for, because she is old (37) and will make the younger employees feel weird about ordering around an older colleague.

One of the women who interviewed Dan-Yi tells her that she had clawed her way into the company and worked her butt off to maintain her position. How dare Dan-Yi try to ride on their coattails after having been a stay-at-home mom for a decade.

Wow. Not gonna lie. I wanted Dan-Yi to punch her in the throat. She didn’t. Sigh.

Desperate for a job, Dan-Yi lies on her application, saying she only has a high school education and little work experience. She gets hired by a publishing house that was founded by a group of passionate editors including … Eun-Ho! He’s also their star author and resident eye candy. But all of that is a bonus book.

Through a series of coincidences, Dan-Yi meets Ji Seo-Joon, a handsome book designer who’s so coveted for his work that he’s become the rock star of his genre. Because he’s handsome, we all know that he will suffer from second lead syndrome (and he does).

Pros: He adopts a gorgeous dog. Woos Dan-Yi with romantic gestures. Did I mention he’s handsome?

Cons: He has a locked room in an apartment, where he is the only occupant. What’s not to worry about, right?

Anyhoooooo… Much is made of how young he is. My goodness. Seo-Joon is 30, compared to to Eun-Ho’s 32 and Dan-Yi’s 37. Can you tell I’m being sarcastic about the differences in their age? Had Dan-Yi been 30 and the men 5- and 7-years older, no one would’ve batted an eye. They’re in their thirties. Everyone is well over the legal age of consent.

If any of you watched “Pretty Noona Who Buys Me Food,” you’ll recognize two of that K-Drama’s co-stars here. Wi Ha-Joon (who played the younger brother of the titular Noona) portrays Seo-Joon. His chemistry with Lee Na-Young is crazy good. Jung Yoo-Jin, who played a career-minded colleague of the aforementioned Noona, has a more layered role here as an editor who has an unrequited crush on Eun-Ho. I loved her character so much, because she was no-nonsense when it came to her work. But she was such a kind person and a true friend. (Jung also co-starred as Lee Jong-Suk’s loyal secretary in “W.” One day, I would love to see the two paired up as a romantic couple in a series or film.)

I could go on and on about the romance elements. Will Dan-Yi ever realize how much Eun-Ho wants to be her boyfriend? Will she choose Eun-Ho or Seo-Joon? But because I knew that she would be fine regardless of who she chose — and that the men would be OK as well — I was more fascinated by the dynamics at the workplace and how difficult it can be for women to juggle being a mom with having a job outside of the home.

Cavaet: I know that there are wonderful dads who work outside the home and raise their children by themselves, too. But statistics show that it’s more often the woman who has to juggle homelife with work.

Kim Sung-Kyun — who was outstanding as one of the ajummas in “Reply 1988” — plays the head of marketing at the publishing house. Though she and her husband both work there, she’s the one who is expected to take time off when their child gets sick and needs care. There is a scenario where she calls in to say she was involved in an accident, rather than say she is at the hospital with her son, because she doesn’t want to be viewed as someone who values her homelife more than her worklife.

Airdates: Sixteen episodes (average about 60-minutes each) aired from January 26 to March 17, 2019 on tvN.

Spoiler Alert:

I don’t think this is much of a spoiler, because it’s fairly obvious. But, just in case… There is a sub-plot where Eun-Ho skips work every now and again to go visit a sickly old man. The elderly man was the famous author, Kang Byeong-Jun, and Eun-Ho’s mentor. When he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, Byeong Jun made the decision to go into seclusion, so that he could die with dignity and without all the gossip that would surround his disease. Eun-Ho became the keeper of his secrets. Seo-Joon is Byeong Jun’s son. The author hadn’t known his ex-girlfriend was pregnant when they broke up. He met Seo-Joon just once, and wrote it down to try to remember. He renamed his book 4/23 — the date of Seo-Joon’s birth — as an homage to his son. But because of his disease, he would lose all memory of his child.

That room in Seo-Joon’s apartment that he kept locked up? He went in there to write a novel in the style of his father’s. Honestly, I thought this element was overkill. He lived alone in his apartment. He didn’t have a lot of visitors. Why did he need a locked room? Was his dog going to read his manuscript? The writers added that element in, I’m sure, to make viewers question whether he was a shady character.

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