Like the female lead to a male lead, to every chaebol boss there must be a right-hand man. To the elderly chairmen, he’s the one who knows where all the bodies are buried and where the slush funds are hidden. And to the young CEOs, he’s the other half of their bromance and oftentimes the cupid to their romance. The right-hand man is a dramaland staple, and he can take the form of a secretary, a manager, a personal assistant, and the like. And in sageuk, he takes the shape of the king’s eunuch or his quiet but deadly bodyguard.
My focus here will be limited to the right-hand men of the younger generation male leads like our chaebol CEOs — whom we are attracted to for obvious reasons: they provide expensive makeovers, rent out amusement parks for dates, and jump to the female lead’s rescue in helicopters. These grand romantic gestures we swoon over are evidence of character growth in the once cold-hearted CEO which, admittedly, stems from his love for the female lead. But this raises the question: how did the CEO realize that he’s in love?
Dramaland CEOs speak multiple languages and can accurately predict the rise and fall of stock prices, but they are total novices on matters of the heart. This is where the right-hand men comes in — often with eyerolls and facepalms — because they’ve spent so many years joined at the hip with their bosses that they can instantly tell when the latter has been bitten by the love bug. It takes a few cycles of denial, but the right-hand man is nothing if not persistent. Soon enough, our CEO comes to the realization that he’s indeed in love.
But because this life love is his first, the CEO who effortlessly commands a board of directors and several subsidiaries is always clueless about the right move to make when it comes to approaching his love interest. So, the job of the right-hand man is far from done as he has to come up with a How to Ask Her Out list for our love-struck CEO. But is it a worthy love story if this list is the key to winning the heroine’s heart? No. Eventually, the CEO has to figure out the best approach on his own. After all, it’s called the hero’s journey, not the sidekick’s. Still, we cannot undermine the importance of the sidekick on this journey.
The fatherly right-hand man is more often seen in sageuk as the older eunuch to a youthful king. Like our chaebol CEOs, for our young kings, getting crowned is basically throwing themselves at the wolves. Their position is constantly threatened by domineering dowagers and meddling ministers. And there’s also the matter of protecting their love interests from political schemes. In what is oftentimes a life and death situation for the hapless kings — who have to put on a stoic persona in the face of the threats — there’s only one person they can be truly vulnerable with: their right-hand man.
The palace is a lonely place and before they can finally get together with their love interest, they are made less lonely by the presence of their right-hand man — the one person who has been by their side since childhood and has watched them grow from crown prince to king. He is aware of their scars, fears, secrets, and deepest desires, and with him, they can just be.