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She Went to See Her Bias. She Got Hired by His Company Instead
What would actually happen if you landed a job at your favorite idol’s company? tvN’s Monday-Tuesday drama “My Bias’s Employee” (“최애의 사원”) takes a question every fan has probably daydreamed about and drops it straight into an office. Kim Hye-jun plays Nam Da-reum, a rookie employee who tried to meet Lee Chan — the idol she’s loved for years — and ended up working at his company instead. She thought her dream “successful fan” life was starting. Turns out, actually clocking in is a lot messier than that.
In Korean fandom, “bias” (최애, choe-ae) means the one member or star you love most. “Successful fan” (성덕, seong-deok) is shorthand for a fan who’s actually met their idol or pulled off something fans usually only dream about. The drama ties both words directly to office life: Nam Da-reum gets close to her bias, but she also has to prove she can actually do the job — and that combination puts her in an awkward spot fast.
A Webtoon’s Fan Devotion Makes the Jump to TV
“My Bias’s Employee” is based on webtoon artist Seong Eun’s Naver Webtoon series “My Oppa Is an Idol” (“우리 오빠는 아이돌”). According to reports from tvN’s production announcement, the original racked up 660 million cumulative global views and ran in multiple languages, including Korean. A setup that mixes a fan-and-star relationship with office romance was already working on webtoon readers — now it’s meeting drama audiences too.
But the show doesn’t just linger on the moment a fan meets her bias. That’s part of why tvN is billing it as an “office growth romance.” For Nam Da-reum, the company is both the place her fangirl dreams come true and a workplace where she has to survive rookie mistakes and find her footing as a new hire. The thrill of watching her favorite person up close keeps colliding with the anxiety of being the new kid at work.
Fandom has a term for turning what you love into your actual job: “deok-eop-ilchi” (덕업일치), roughly “fandom-career alignment.” But loving something doesn’t automatically make you good at it. Just landing a job at her bias’s company doesn’t earn Nam Da-reum any credit on its own. The drama sells the sweet fantasy of deok-eop-ilchi, sure — but it also lays out the responsibility and tension that come right after.
Kim Hye-jun, Kang Hoon, and Cha Woo-min Kick Off a Love Triangle
Kim Hye-jun plays the upbeat rookie Nam Da-reum. She joins fashion startup Apello purely to catch a glimpse of her bias, but her very first day on the job catches the eye of CEO Kang Ha-gi instead. With the moments where she has to hide that she’s a fan constantly overlapping with the moments she has to actually perform at work, her expressions and choices end up mattering just as much as the romance itself.
Kang Hoon plays Kang Ha-gi, the CEO running Apello — cool and exacting on the job, but introduced as awkward the moment he’s around someone he actually likes. Nam Da-reum came in with eyes only for her bias, but she keeps getting tangled up with the CEO instead, and that complicates where the relationship is actually headed. Watching a demanding boss-rookie clash slowly shift into something else is a big part of the draw here.
Cha Woo-min plays Lee Chan, the idol Nam Da-reum has loved for years. Lee Chan has grown from idol into actor and era-defining icon, and he also happens to be a director at Apello. Onstage he looks like he’s missing nothing — but he’s carrying a loneliness he keeps to himself. With fan Nam Da-reum, bias Lee Chan, and CEO Kang Ha-gi all landing at the same company, the triangle is complete.
Korean Fandom Culture and Office Culture Collide on Screen
To viewers outside Korea, Nam Da-reum’s choices might read as a little bold. In Korean fandom, “ipdeok” (입덕) means starting to stan a particular star, and “taldeok” (탈덕) means quitting fan activities altogether. “My Bias’s Employee” mixes that fan vocabulary with workplace language — hiring, overtime, performance reviews, employee-of-the-month picks. Even the title is a pun stitching the two worlds together.
What makes the combination interesting is that Lee Chan is essentially two different people to Nam Da-reum. On one side, he’s the bias she’s watched on a screen for years; on the other, he’s a director she now runs into at the same company. The distance a fan is supposed to keep inevitably collides with the communication a coworker actually needs. Layering an asymmetrical fan-and-star dynamic onto a familiar office romance adds a tension the genre doesn’t usually have.
Watch Nam Da-reum Grow — Don’t Just Wait for the Pairing
tvN’s official synopsis frames the show as a “chaotic office growth romance” centered on Nam Da-reum. Follow only who she ends up with, and you’ll miss half the story. The real question is whether Nam Da-reum, now close to her bias, can hold onto her identity as a fan while also growing into a capable employee — and whether the company stops being just a stage for her fangirl dreams and becomes somewhere she actually belongs.
“My Bias’s Employee” airs Mondays and Tuesdays on tvN. Kim Hye-jun’s rookie struggling to keep it together, Kang Hoon’s awkward CEO romance, and the hidden feelings Cha Woo-min brings to the bias role are just starting to properly tangle. Could you actually focus on work at a company where your bias is on staff? Nam Da-reum’s next shift will start answering that, one day at a time.
Source: Yoon Hyo-jung, News1, January 29, 2026; Choi Moon-sun, Newspim, June 24, 2026; tvN official program page, accessed August 9, 2026.
