7 Female Bodyguard Kdramas and Undercover Thrillers to Watch After Love in Disguise

Written by Huzaifa

Start with Wild Romance. Of all the female bodyguard kdramas I’d queue after Love in Disguise, it has my favorite hiring process. A woman throws a baseball star to the floor at karaoke. Somebody films it. By the time his people have finished explaining the video, she’s on his payroll.

If you’re more interested in how long Kang Jae-hee can keep lying to her boss, move Good Casting to the front. Its undercover secretary walks into work and discovers a particularly inconvenient flaw in her cover. The CEO knows her face.

Seven picks at a glance

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1. Wild Romance gives the bodyguard a rooting interest

Yoo Eun-jae’s family supports the Blue Seagulls. Her dad supplies the team with eel from his sushi restaurant. That’s the level of loyalty we’re dealing with when she runs into Park Mu-yeol, a star on the rival Red Dreamers, on her dad’s birthday. Ask this woman to take a hit for Mu-yeol and, under normal circumstances, I’d give her better odds of throwing it.

Lee Si-young plays Eun-jae as a former judo athlete who already earns her living in private security. When the karaoke footage goes public, calling it a self-defense demonstration could save both their careers. The catch is that the explanation only works if she keeps turning up to guard Lee Dong-wook’s very recognizable face. KBS World’s Wild Romance series page

That’s why this gets my first slot. In episode two, both parties would still happily get out of the arrangement. By episode three, there’s a problem with Mu-yeol’s water jug. Suddenly I care whether the one person with every reason to dislike this man pays closer attention than the people who claim to love him.

2. Strong Woman Do Bong Soon lets the client fall first

One of the pleasures of female bodyguard kdramas is watching a leading man figure out what to do with himself once the heroine has handled the fight. Ahn Min-hyuk’s answer is pretty endearing. He sees Do Bong-soon take on a group of thugs, realizes she could do something about the threats he’s been receiving, and offers her a job. Park Hyung-sik plays the whole business like Min-hyuk can’t believe his luck.

Bong-soon has her own reason to take the meeting. She wants to design a video game starring a character like herself, and he runs a game company. I love that detail. Park Bo-young gets to play a woman who can put a grown man in the hospital and still has to work out how to get a foot in the door of her chosen industry.

This is my romance pick, with one qualification about tone. The kidnapping case in Bong-soon’s neighborhood gets genuinely frightening. Come for Min-hyuk’s lovestruck face, but expect the show to cut away from it at some fairly alarming moments.

3. Good Casting sends three women undercover in one office

Imagine trying to pass yourself off as a stranger to someone you used to tutor. Now imagine he had a crush on you, grew up to run the company you’re investigating and gets to see you at his desk every morning. Of all my Love in Disguise recommendations, this is the one I’d give someone who enjoyed watching Jae-hee survive her job interview.

Choi Kang-hee plays Baek Chan-mi, one of three intelligence agents investigating a corporate technology leak. She takes the secretary’s job. Im Ye-eun goes in as an intern, while Hwang Mi-soon joins the cleaning staff. That last posting might be my pick of the three. An executive assistant can get onto the boss’s calendar, but people who watch their mouths around the assistant may carry right on talking in front of the cleaner.

The comedy gets broad, so cue this one up for the women improvising their way through a bad plan. The old crush is a lovely complication. I’d still watch these three try to pull the job off without him.

4. Oh! My Guard gives a fan the wrong idea about her leading man

Uhm Tae-bong is a romance star who refuses to film kissing scenes. Oh Hae-ra is a fan who, after an accident, believes she’s the heroine of his show The Crown Prince’s Bodyguard. When she volunteers to guard him, he’s meeting a stranger. As far as she’s concerned, the two of them already have quite a history.

Hong Seung-hee has the trickier half of that joke. Hae-ra has to mean what she says about protecting him, even as we recognize how unsettling that declaration would sound to an actor off the clock. Jung Yong-hwa’s Tae-bong, meanwhile, has enough trouble getting through a romantic scene when everybody involved has actually read the same script.

Pick this one if Jae-hee keeping a straight face in Love in Disguise made you laugh. Jae-hee knows exactly which parts of her introduction are false. Hae-ra would pass a lie detector. I’m rooting for Jae-hee to get away with the lie, but with Hae-ra, half the fun is watching Tae-bong try to talk her out of the truth as she sees it.

5. Undercover Miss Hong makes seniority the giveaway

Park Shin-hye’s Hong Geum-bo knows the securities business well enough to investigate Hanmin from the inside. The trouble is that she’s 35, and the person she’s pretending to be is a 20-year-old new hire. Imagine spotting something obviously wrong at work, opening your mouth to correct it and remembering that, according to your résumé, the person you’re about to correct outranks you.

Then her ex turns up as CEO. I’d have made that the entire pitch. The drama wins me over by finding something even better in the women Geum-bo lives with. Her roommates know parts of junior office life that an accomplished regulator could have spent a career overlooking.

In r/KDRAMA’s finale discussion, viewers singled out the women of Room 301. One even spotted a hair clip Bom had given Nora and talked about what it meant to see her wearing it during a speech. That’s a good clue to the appeal of this undercover K-drama. You can come in curious about the ex and end up emotionally invested in who gave somebody a hair clip.

6. Powerful Opponents takes the security job seriously

If you came looking for female bodyguard kdramas because you want to see what it takes to qualify for the job, start here. The first episode spends time putting new guards through punishing training. Chae Rim’s Cha Young-jin has worked for a place on the presidential security detail, and getting in only earns her the right to tackle a particularly difficult assignment.

Young-jin and fellow guard Yoo Gwang-pil have to protect the president’s son, Kang Soo-ho. I like the three-person setup because a bodyguard romance usually lets you concentrate on how she feels about the man she’s guarding. Here there’s also a colleague beside her who has to live with her decisions. If she misreads the situation, he’s on duty too.

Look for the alternate English title Rivals if you’re browsing older KBS coverage. My vote still goes to Wild Romance for bickering, but Young-jin is the woman on this list I’d most like to hear talk about her first week at work.

7. My Name puts the mole on the police payroll

Kang Jae-hee is a detective who gets close to a murder suspect. Han So-hee’s Yoon Ji-woo approaches the badge from the opposite direction. After her father is killed, she accepts help from a crime boss and enters the police under a new identity. Getting closer to the investigation means trusting the man who helped put her there. How comfortable would you be owing him that favor?

Netflix gives this story eight episodes. In the first episode, Ji-woo trains in the gang’s fight gym. Watch where Han keeps her eyes when Ji-woo faces a bigger opponent. She has to study the person trying to hurt her even as every instinct says to look away. That makes a sharp change from Bong-soon, who needs considerable self-control just to avoid hurting someone by accident. By the time Ji-woo is among the cops, I’m already carrying the memory of what she had to endure to get there.

Save this for a night when you actually want a bruising revenge thriller. If you’ve just finished an episode of Love in Disguise and want another couple to kick your feet over before bed, Min-hyuk is right there.

Which female bodyguard kdramas should you start with?

My double bill would be Wild Romance followed by Good Casting. Watch Eun-jae try to keep a straight face while the public buys a ridiculous explanation for a real fight. Then watch Chan-mi try to sell a new identity to a man who remembers the original. Between them, you get both pleasures of Love in Disguise.

An r/kdramas discussion about Love in Disguise put the choice in perspective for me. One viewer said episode three finally won them over because Jae-hee and Yi-jun spent more time together. If that was your turning point too, go straight to Strong Woman Do Bong Soon. For my take on how the central couple carries the first four episodes, there’s also my spoiler-free Love in Disguise review.

If you were a chaebol heir having a disastrous workday, would you hire Eun-jae, who might throw you, or Bong-soon, who’d have to be careful just shaking your hand?