Im Siwan's Heir Has a 3 Trillion Won Deal and a Body in His Cabinet

By the end of the first episode of tvN's My Guilty Man, Im Siwan's character, a chaebol heir on the verge of taking over a conglomerate, has become the leading suspect in the strangling of his own secretary. Seol In-ah's detective then walks into his office in disguise as a man, and he pulls off her glasses with a line that suggests he has already seen through her.

The new Monday-Tuesday drama premiered on the 19th. Im plays Yoon Yi-jun, an executive director at Taegang, the top-ranked business group in South Korea.

An heir who markets everything

The episode opens as the president's plane lands after a Middle East tour with an economic delegation. Yoon Yi-jun, the youngest member of the group, is credited with leading the diplomacy and lifting Taegang's share price. With Chairman Yoon Tae-sik ill, he is widely named as the next successor. He also angles his handshake with the president so his watch is visible to the cameras, and picks the press photo that shows off the Seven Series model launching next month.

The show draws his character in small, funny strokes. He is correcting his secretary's tea (88 degrees for 3 minutes 10 seconds, not 90 degrees for 3 minutes) and then refusing to drink it. Kim Si-hyun, who greets him, marvels that he secured a 3 trillion won business deal and still turned the president's presence into free advertising. Yoon replies, with a straight face, that the red carpet, the cameras and the model were all there, so why wouldn't he shoot it? Kim hears that and feels chastened. Even a Taegang heir, he says, lives this tightly.

A secretary found dead

The tone shifts after Kim tells Yoon the chairman intends to finalize succession before the shareholders' meeting. Secretary Han Eun-yeong calls, and Yoon later receives her text saying she will report to the chairman if he avoids her again. She is then found dead in a cabinet, strangled.

Yoon's fingerprints are on both the body and the belt used as the weapon. No skin tissue, blood or other DNA from the killer was found on the victim, but Yoon is still the most likely suspect. A special team takes the case, yet the chairman's influence causes it to be quietly closed.

Seol In-ah enters in disguise

Blocked by that wall, Kang Jae-hee (Seol In-ah) decides to apply to Taegang's open call for a male personal aide in order to find Han's missing phone. When Park Bong-i (Kim In-kwon) brushes her off, she answers that people mistake her for a man whenever she simply breathes, so she might as well become one properly.

She makes it to the interview in disguise. Yoon presses on her trauma and she lashes out at him, which gets her rejected, since no aide attacks a boss. Then danger finds Yoon and she throws herself in to save him. He says no one has ever done that, or folded his waist like a folder, and lists his requirement for an aide: she must like him unconditionally. She shouts that she will, and she is hired.

On her first day, Yoon removes her glasses and says he had his doubts but has now caught her. Whether he truly knows who she is, or what he is hiding, is the question the next episode inherits.