Undercover Miss Hong is a comedy drama set during the 1990’s IMF crisis where a financial supervisory officer (Park Shin Hye) goes undercover as a recently graduated 20 year old to investigate suspicious happenings at a security firm.
Park Shin Hye plays Hong Geum Bo who is a tough financial supervisory officer. She goes to great lengths to go undercover as a 20 year old new employee at the company Hanmin so she can expose their secrets.
Go Kyung Pyo is Sin Jeong Woo. He becomes the new president at Hanmin where he has his own agenda. He then unexpectedly reunites with his past love Geum Bo at the company which causes some complications.
Then we have Go Bok Hui (Ha Yoon Kyung) as Geum Bo’s new roommate who is known as the “Queen Bee”.
Finally, there is Albert O (Cho Han Gyeol) who works in Geum Bo’s department and is in line to inherit the company.
Undercover Miss Hong is definitely not my typical kind of drama on paper with its story centering around financial corruption at a company. It’s an office drama with business politics. But its lighter take on an undercover investigation infused with humor, heart, and quirky characters really clicked with me and made for a delightfully fun drama. I also loved the 90s setting as well as the fun OST.
There’s a solid story that is centered around Geum Bo. She’s a woman with strong convictions and is ready to do whatever it takes to uncover corruption. I loved how dedicated she was to her investigation. At times, she was definitely willing to go over the top to accomplish her goals, but she was great at what she did. She brought a toughness that was wrapped in compassion. Geum Bo was a great character to root for.
We get wonderfully fleshed out characters, and they are all so entertaining all the way from the heroes to the villains. I also really enjoyed that many of the characters were various shades of gray that had the opportunity to experience growth over the course of the drama. The company setting created a well-developed world for them to inhabit.
Relationships are a big part of the drama, and there are lots of wonderful ones to explore. For me, some of the best ones came from the friendship that develops between Geum Bo and her three roommates that she lives with while she is undercover.
They are an interesting group of women with each being very different from each other. They don’t always get along and are sometimes at odds, but they really became close and were such an incredible support for each other. I loved the relationship between each pair of women as well as the group as a whole. It’s so nice to see the depiction of such wonderful female friendships.
Geum Bo has fun relationships with the department she works in at Hanmin too. This trio of men definitely bring a lot of fun as well as some heart to the show.
There’s also Geum Bo’s relationship with her boss at her company who is her main help and contact in her undercover investigation. Lots of entertainment to be had here too.
For those wondering if there’s romance, there really isn’t. Geum Bo does have a past romantic relationship with Jeong Woo, and that definitely does affect their present day relationship in a lot of ways. But it never really goes back into the romance territory. The dynamics between them are very interesting though, and I was always curious to see where their back and forth would go.
I had a great time with Undercover Miss Hong. I really love seeing a drama be able to take a subject matter that I’m not as into and make it engaging. It leaned fun and comedic but also delivered a dash of suspense and some heartfelt emotional topics. I was genuinely interested to see how Geum Bo would uncover corruption at Hanmin and even felt genuinely invested in the company’s future. It was a thoroughly enjoyable drama all the way through.
My Rating: 8/10
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