K-Drama Report: Undercover Miss Hong (2026)

Episode 1

Original Broadcast: 17 January 2026 – March 2026
Written by Moon Hyun-kyung, Directed by Park Seon-ho
Starring Park Shin-hye, Go Kyung-po, Ha Yoon-kyung, Cho Han-gyeol

Also known as “Ms. Incognito”

I’m going to do something potentially dangerous here, which is to begin coverage of a K-drama after its first episode. Hold my hand as we embark – ew, clammy. My policy generally is to only write when I have something to say, because you only get one life and you can’t spend it writing hundreds or thousands of words on “meh.” The white-collar jury is still out on Undercover Miss Hong, so with this post, I wanted to talk about the first episode and how it functions as a first episode. In American television, we have “pilots,” a term that might’ve lately been broadened to simply mean “premiere,” but which used to be an internal document for a studio ahead of a full season order. The result, aside from hundreds or thousands of television shows never seeing the green light, was that TV shows from their second episode on might look and feel radically different. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is a good example, because its pilot was initially made for Showtime before being picked up by The CW, so edits were made for adult content. Of course, you have legendary stories like Game of Thrones and all its tinkering, and the pilot might even be redone if it’s raggedy enough, like It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. These days, I feel like quality control is more important (A-list actors probably don’t tolerate the dreaded “pilot season”). So, you wouldn’t have, like, a pilot for FX’s Shogun in quite the same way. That was meant to be a limited series regardless. Moral of the story: first episodes kind of suck.

In K-dramas, it’s no different. Or rather, if they don’t suck, they’re at least not gonna be like the rest of the show. One of the hazards I’ve had with rewatching Search: WWW is that its first two episodes, really, are so different (and sometimes, I skip them). The conflict is different, the setting is different, even the cast, to some degree, is different (not enough Lee Da-hee, obviously). In fact, this is the inverse problem; American pilots are meant to be a microcosm – a vertical slice, in the modern parlance – giving the studio and possibly the audience a sense of the show going forward. Episodic storytelling is out of fashion, making something like Squid Game kind of miraculous for ending its first episode with round one. One of the best hooks in recent memory. Then there are the problems unique to the genre. I’d put off Genie, Make a Wish for a while because I feared the lore dump, and hadn’t anticipated how quickly that show would move. By the end of the first episode of Undercover Miss Hong, we’ve reached the precipice of what the show, I assume, will be. Our lead character, Hong Keum-bo, is a 35-year-old financial inspector who goes undercover as a 20-year-old college grad to infiltrate the corrupt Hanmin Investment & Securities and blow the case wide open, but we only get the first part of that sentence fragment. It’s less of a pilot than it is a first act.

In Hollywood moviemaking, the three-act structure is often attended to like a holy shrine. Stargate is a great example, because they walk through the Stargate at the 30-minute mark, like a goddamn bull’s-eye. In Undercover Miss Hong, we hit all the requisite beats with a similar, studied discipline. The question for each of these story beats is how much they advance Hong to the goal of “walk through the Stargate,” or in her case, go undercover at Hanmin Investment & Securities. So, we first establish that she’s an upright and ruthless investigator, in a cheeky tease of her undercover skills when she appears to accept a bribe from a defendant before turning on him in court as a witness. In doing so, she demonstrates taekwondo – it’s Park Shin-hye after all – and exposes two corrupt coworkers, one of whom is subsequently fired. The other develops a petty office vengeance. Before she can even sink her teeth into the next case as a newly minted team leader, she’s contacted by a whistleblower inside Hanmin, who just so happens to be CEO of the company and the evil founder’s son. Initially, Hong isn’t sure she can trust this guy, but comes to believe his story about an incriminating ledger after he’s killed in an extremely convenient traffic accident. The prosecution drops the case against the grieving family (“Bad optics,” as Commissioner Tom Selleck would say), and Hong is replaced as team leader by the vengeful rival. The good-natured boss, Director Yoon, hatches the cockamamie scheme for Hong to go undercover as a junior employee and find the ledger, and as per the rules, Hong turns him down.

Queen of High Kick

Let’s pause here, because I was not prepared for how much of an all-out farce Undercover Miss Hong would be. All I knew going in was “Park Shin-hye,” as my brain, admittedly, has been in 28 Years Later land these past few days (I am terrified that the box office numbers are gonna tank the third installment). The silly premise might’ve tipped me off, but you never know with K-dramas. They tend to be both tonally flexible and willing to take seriously the most ludicrous ideas. This might be the upshot of South Korea not having a science fiction tradition; they never bother grounding the fantastical aspects because such things don’t need to be squared? I’m thinking specifically of The Beauty Inside, which balanced poignant romance with a setup so gonzo I can’t even succinctly express it. Undercover Miss Hong is not so fanciful, especially since Park Shin-hye really could pass for younger – 20 may be stretching it – and this is indeed but one humor udder for the milking. I hesitate to say the show is a successful comedy, because it’s very broad, with an overactive score and animated graphics underlining every zing, but I think I must be getting old because I was laughing throughout. I don’t need my comedy to be perfectly marbled, with the mathematically correct balance of irony and anti-irony – anymore. I mean, maturation itself can be measured in one’s evolving sense of humor, marked by whatever Adam Sandler or Ben Stiller movie left behind. And then there’s a tight window in your life where it’s okay to like Kevin Smith, and so on.

If I had to describe my sense of humor, informed largely by millennial Internet content like Homestar Runner, Knox’s Korner, and even the crasser eBaum’s World, it would be “non sequitur.” It’s anytime the punchline doesn’t match the setup in just such a way, and especially if it’s somehow loud. Really random example, but the sentence “I’d invite my enemies to my wedding, but it wasn’t a wedding, it was a bomb” from an old podcast always puts a smile on my face (“wedding” and “bomb” have zero, even inverse correlation). And Undercover Miss Hong gives us another example, when Director Yoon first pitches his idea to Hong, who’s in the hospital after an attempted murder that left her with a broken arm. He brought a big fruit basket, incorrectly assuming she wouldn’t be immediately discharged. Hong says that going undercover at Hanmin is walking into a death trap, and leaves. Yoon starts after her, but pivots back to grab the fruit basket and trips, falling to the floor and spilling bananas everywhere, and for no reason at all, he yells after her, “HOOONG!!” like he’s William Shatner, with a crash zoom and everything. So needlessly dramatic out of nowhere, and man, I was in pieces. This sets up a cute montage where Yoon continues to try to win Hong over on this, winning me over at least, as a character. To our central question, Yoon at one point notes that she wouldn’t be believable as a 20 year old, to which Hong glides against the fourth wall with indignation. Again, she is Park Shin-hye after all. I did think, though, “Oh, God, is this the reason she accepts the job?” (It isn’t).

For reference, this is the “Refusal of the Call,” in Campbellian terms. Instinctively, writers understand that the offer to begin the plot can’t be immediately accepted. We need to first establish the character’s motivation, which would likely be more dramatic (as in “dramatic need”). For Hong, it’s seeing a televised press conference by the evil CEO, Kang Pil-beom, which triggers memories of past encounters with Hanmin. Apparently, the company had a hand in ruining her career, but we’ll get more details later. It’s enough for her to take the assignment and begin the makeover, with help from her younger sister (Itzy’s Yuna, in a debut role/cameo). She tests out the new look by going to a video store for an adult video, hoping to be ID’ed. By the way, the store advertised DVDs, which I was certain weren’t around in 1997, but they were apparently invented in 1995. You win this round, Undercover Miss Hong. And as not mentioned earlier, the show is set in 1997, shortly after the IMF financial crisis, which ties into the subject matter. It was one of those times when people were just terrible with money. Getting hired at the company requires passing an interview with academic rigor, which inadvertently brings Hong close to the adorably clueless Nora, would-be Hanmin heiress forced to earn her way, and the dread secretary Ko Bok-hui, who’d earlier encountered adult-mode Hong on the streets. And so, we end our first episode on a cliffhanger. Is the jig up before it’s even begun?

Also spotted at the end is none other than Kang Chae-young, making this the third K-drama in a row. She was the envious bank teller in Genie and one of the trainees in Jeongnyeon: The Star is Born. At this point, it’s like she’s following me – or I’m following her. Either way, not good. Why do we have the same taste in leading ladies? Incidentally, Kang Pil-beom is played by Lee Deok-hwa, who appeared in the first episode of Jeongnyeon (among countless other credits in a 50-year career). Throughout the episode, we check in with Pil-beom and Hanmin, though the power politics haven’t particularly impressed yet. So far, the show carries on the charisma of its star, who’s even more over-the-top here than in The Judge from Hell (and maybe a bit more badass). As the second episode tomorrow will provide a better sense of the show, it remains to be seen if her durable shoulders will get a break. Remember, kids, this is my second attempt at sticking with a show as it airs, after flunking out of Miss Incognito last year, which I regret. I like what I’ve seen, and I’m ready to see more, and that’s the exact function of a first episode. Hopefully, I’m not compelled to write about how second episodes tend to be boring as hell.