What Is Love in Disguise About?

Start with the setup, because the whole show hangs on it. Kang Jae-hee (Seol In-ah) is a police officer with a special forces past, the kind of person who can out-fight almost anyone in the room. Her new assignment is unusual: get close to Yoon Yi-jun (Yim Si-wan), the polished heir to Taegang Group, Korea's top-ranked conglomerate in the story, who has become the prime suspect in the death of his secretary. The way in is a job opening. Yi-jun needs a new personal secretary and bodyguard, so Jae-hee cuts her hair, trades her wardrobe for dark suits and walks into his office as a man.

From there the comedy writes itself, and the tension does too. She is supposed to be gathering evidence against him. He is supposed to be keeping his distance from anyone who might know too much. Instead, he starts to fall for the sharp, unflappable young man who follows him everywhere, and she has to protect a person she is also trying to convict. tvN describes it as a "thrill romance," and the label fits: it is a romantic comedy built on top of a murder investigation, with the question of who actually killed the secretary running underneath every flirtation.

Director Park Dan-hee, whose earlier work includes Weak Hero Class 1, said at the online press conference on October 14 that all four lead characters carry a secret of their own, as reported by Herald Business. Kim Jung-hyun, who plays Yi-jun's lawyer friend, pitched the mood more simply: a drama to watch as easily as reaching for a piece of chocolate after a tiring day.

One question comes up again and again in searches: is Love in Disguise a BL drama? Not in the usual sense. Jae-hee is a woman throughout, and the audience knows it from the first scene; the romance is between her and Yi-jun. The comedy plays on the fact that Yi-jun believes his secretary is a man, so some moments are deliberately written to look like a same-sex romance from his side. tvN's chief producer Kim Ho-jun acknowledged this at the network's Creator Talk on September 16, saying, as reported by Ilgan Sports, that the show has a BL code but that what stands out is the catharsis of a classic romantic comedy.

Release Date, Episodes and Where to Watch

Love in Disguise premieres on Monday, October 19, 2026, at 8:50 p.m. Korea Standard Time on tvN. It takes over the network's Monday-Tuesday drama slot, so two new episodes arrive each week, one on Monday and one on Tuesday. The series runs for 12 episodes, which puts the finale six weeks after the premiere if the schedule holds.

Outside Korea, the show streams on Prime Video. When Amazon announced the series on September 4, it said Love in Disguise would premiere on October 19 in more than 240 countries and territories, with episodes added weekly on Mondays and Tuesdays. That includes the United States and much of Southeast Asia; Prime Video's channels in the Philippines, Singapore and Malaysia have already released the teaser. Inside Korea, the drama airs on tvN and is also available on the streaming platform TVING, which has published its own trailer for the October 19 launch.

Is Love in Disguise on Netflix? No. Prime Video is the streaming home for international audiences, and no other global streamer has been announced. This is worth knowing because tvN dramas move between services from show to show; two of this autumn's buzziest Korean series, 100 Days of Deception and Take Charge of My Heart, are on Netflix, which is why many viewers assume this one will be too.

For a quick reference: 12 episodes, Mondays and Tuesdays, 8:50 p.m. KST, tvN and TVING in Korea, Prime Video everywhere else.

Love in Disguise Cast: Who Plays Whom

Yim Si-wan as Yoon Yi-jun. The third-generation heir of Taegang Group, flawless in public and, as the teasers make clear, fussy and thin-skinned in private. Yim, a former member of the idol group ZE:A, became one of Korea's most watched actors through Misaeng and has recently reached global audiences through Squid Game. At the press conference he described dressing Yi-jun like a peacock spreading its feathers: the lonelier the character feels, the more flamboyant the styling.

Seol In-ah as Kang Jae-hee. A detective with a special forces background and a combined ninth dan across judo, hapkido and taekwondo, working undercover as Yi-jun's male secretary. A note on her name, since it confuses many searches: Korean media write it as Seol In-ah, while Prime Video credits her as Seorina, the spelling she uses on her social media. They are the same person. Viewers may know her from Business Proposal, where she played the friend whose blind date sets the plot in motion.

Kim Jung-hyun as Kim Si-hyun. A lawyer on Taegang Group's legal team and Yi-jun's friend of sixteen years, with his own reasons for watching the case closely.

Yeonwoo as Lee Hye-jung. Secretary to Chairman Yoon Tae-sik. Kim Jung-hyun and Yeonwoo form the show's second couple, which the actors have described in interviews as the grown-up pair, a counterweight to the leads' chaos.

The series is directed by Park Dan-hee, written by Moon Soo-jung and produced by CJ ENM Studios and Pitapat Studio.

Is Love in Disguise Based on a Webtoon?

Yes, and before that, a web novel. The drama adapts Yeojain Geol Wae Moreuji? (여자인 걸 왜 모르지?), a romantic comedy web novel by Lee A-hyun and Ryu Do-ha (이아현, 류도하) published on Kakao Page. It was later adapted into a webtoon drawn by the artist One Punch Rabbit (원펀치래빗), which launched in December 2022 and is credited on Kakao Webtoon to all three creators. Translated literally, the title asks "Why don't you know I'm a woman?", and in English you will see it rendered as Why Don't You Know She's a Woman? or Why Don't You Know It's a Girl? All of these refer to the same work.

If you want to read it, the official places are Kakao Webtoon and Kakao Page, where the webtoon and novel are published in Korean. The webtoon's production studio, YJ Comics, also lists a French release. We could not find an official English edition. Many of the "read online" results that appear for the manhwa are unlicensed scan sites, which do not pay the creators and often carry unsafe ads; if an English edition is licensed after the drama airs, it will appear on the official platforms first.

How close will the drama stay to the original? Until episodes air, only what tvN has shown can be compared. The core is intact: the heroine is still Kang Jae-hee, the ex-special forces officer, and the suspect is still Yoon Yi-jun. In the original, Yi-jun's family company is called Samgang Group; the drama renames it Taegang. The drama also builds out a second couple around Kim Si-hyun and Lee Hye-jung, and tvN's marketing leans harder on the murder investigation, calling it a thrill romance where the source is pitched as a straight rom-com. The original web novel is complete, so the story already has an ending. We will not spoil it, but readers who want to know whether the drama follows it can find out on Kakao before the finale.

The pattern is familiar. Korean digital fiction has become one of television's richest pipelines, and the novel-to-webtoon-to-drama route this story took is the same one that carried Business Proposal to the screen. Our piece on Korean webtoons and the streaming generation looks at why that pipeline keeps producing hits.

My Guilty Human, and the Other Love in Disguise

This drama has had more names than a witness protection file, which explains a lot of the confusion online. It was first reported in October 2025 under the original web novel's title. It was then developed under a working title, and finally broadcast in Korea as Naui Yujoe Ingan (나의 유죄인간), literally "My Guilty Human." Love in Disguise is the English title used by Prime Video and in English-language coverage.

What does the Korean title mean? Yujoe means "guilty," and the joke works on two levels. Yi-jun is a murder suspect, so the question of his guilt drives the plot. But in Korean pop culture, calling someone guilty is also a playful way of saying they are too charming for anyone's good. tvN's suspect teaser makes the pun explicit, accusing the leads of the crime of making a heart race. The English title takes a simpler route and names the disguise itself.

Now the other Love in Disguise. Searches for "Love in Disguise Chinese drama" mostly lead to two different things. The first is a 2010 Mandarin-language film of the same English title, directed by and starring the singer Wang Leehom with Liu Yifei, about a pop star who goes undercover as a music student. The second is a crowd of short vertical dramas on short-video apps that reuse the phrase Love in Disguise in their titles. None of them is connected to the Korean series. If a listing shows Chinese-speaking actors, a 2010 date or episodes only a few minutes long, it is not the tvN drama. Adding "K-drama" or "Yim Si-wan" to a search is the fastest way to find the right one.

From Coffee Prince to Love in the Moonlight

A heroine who passes as a man is one of Korean television's favorite romantic devices, and Love in Disguise arrives with a long line of predecessors. The modern touchstone is Coffee Prince (MBC, 2007), in which Yoon Eun-hye's tomboyish Go Eun-chan is mistaken for a young man and hired at a café that employs only men, while her boss, played by Gong Yoo, wrestles with feelings he cannot explain. You're Beautiful (SBS, 2009) put Park Shin-hye in her twin brother's place in an idol band. Sungkyunkwan Scandal (KBS, 2010) sent Park Min-young into a Joseon-era academy for men, and Love in the Moonlight (KBS, 2016) cast Kim Yoo-jung as a young woman raised as a boy who ends up serving as a palace eunuch.

Why does the trope keep returning? Part of the answer is structural. A disguise gives a romance a built-in secret, and secrets create the two things a rom-com needs most: suspense about when the truth will come out, and dramatic irony, because the audience always knows more than the hero. The disguise also lets the heroine move through spaces that would otherwise be closed to her, which is why the setting changes with the era, from a Joseon academy to a K-pop band to, here, the executive floor of a conglomerate.

Love in Disguise adds a twist of its own: the heroine is not hiding because she has to, but because it is her job. Jae-hee is working a case, which gives the old secret a sharper edge. When the truth comes out, it will not only reveal that she is a woman, but that she was investigating him all along. That double reveal is what the drama's marketing keeps hinting at, and it is the reason this familiar trope may feel new again.