Choi-ae's Employee Wraps With 3.1% Ratings as Kim Hye-jun Reflects on Nailing Her Romcom Debut

One comment from a fan was all it took. Kim Hye-jun, the actress who built her reputation gutting it out through visceral thrillers, read a post somewhere online calling her romcom debut a "passing grade" and felt something shift. "Even hearing it from just one person gave me the confidence to try again," she said in an interview on the 8th in Gangnam, Seoul. "It made me want to treat this one as a study guide and do even better next time."

My Favorite Employee, the tvN Monday-Tuesday drama she led alongside Kang Hoon, wrapped its twelfth and final episode on the 8th with a 3.1 percent nationwide rating according to Nielsen Korea. Internationally, the show reached as high as third on Prime Video India and landed in the top three across all regions on Rakuten Viki as of the 8th.

From explosions to everyday feelings

For Kim Hye-jun, the shift to romantic comedy was a genuine creative stretch. Her previous work includes the Disney+ thriller Killer Shopping Mall, the Netflix series Kingdom, and the JTBC drama Gugyeong-i, all genre pieces built around clear, high-stakes emotion. She joked that a crew member who had worked with her on Killer Shopping Mall kept teasing her on set: "He'd say, 'One bomb and it's all over. Isn't it frustrating, Da-reum?'" She laughed recounting it.

But underneath the humor was a real challenge. "In genre dramas, you're working with defined emotions, rage, joy, grief," she said. "Romantic comedy is everyday acting. Because it's supposed to look like real life, I felt the pressure that far more people would need to recognize themselves in it."

Her solution was to lean fully into warmth. "I decided to maximize whatever cuteness I have and just go for it," she said. "No more being embarrassed. I committed to being genuinely lovable." She admitted she worried that audiences conditioned by her thriller work might find it jarring, but the feedback settled her. "They say 'cute is everything,' and every time someone actually said I was cute, it gave me energy."

What the character meant to her

In the show, Kim Hye-jun plays Nam Da-reum, a new employee who joins a fashion platform company specifically because her favorite idol, Lee Chan (played by Cha Woo-min), works there as an executive director. The story, adapted from the popular webtoon Our Oppa Is an Idol, takes an unexpected turn when Da-reum falls for the company's CEO, Kang Ha-gi (Kang Hoon), rather than the star she originally chased.

In the finale, Da-reum earns a work placement opportunity in Paris with Ha-gi's support, returns to receive a proposal from him, and also lands the role of project manager for the idol group D.N.X, fulfilling a 12-year fan devotion through her career rather than just her heart.

Kim Hye-jun thought carefully about why Da-reum makes the choice she does. "I think there's a kind of sparkle and preciousness in keeping a celebrity you love as a star," she said. "But ultimately, I think you fall in love with the person who watches over you and holds you gently."

The show also gave her a new appreciation for what being a fan actually costs someone emotionally. Da-reum's character arc begins in school, where she was bullied before finding community through her love of Lee Chan, later building her dream of becoming a fashion marketer partly because of his influence. "There's nothing as pure or as energy-consuming as liking someone with no ulterior motive," Kim Hye-jun said. "And fans do it willingly. Working on this made me feel more deeply just how precious that kind of unconditional affection is, especially in a world where it's hard enough to take care of yourself."

What comes next

Having cleared the romcom hurdle, Kim Hye-jun says she wants to keep widening her range rather than settling into any single lane. "I don't want to define my limits just yet," she said. "I want to expand my spectrum."

It's a goal that sounds modest, but given how deliberately she approached a genre that asked something completely different of her, it reads more like a roadmap than a vague wish.