Secret Love Affair
密会
Storyline
The whole story, ending included.
A forty-year-old arts foundation director and a twenty-year-old piano prodigy; the piano duets are the sex scenes.
Oh Hye-won is forty, elegant and indispensable. As planning director of the Seohan Arts Foundation she smooths over the quarrels of the family that owns the Seohan group and quietly manages its chairman's secret funds, hoping one day to run the foundation herself. Her marriage to Kang Joon-hyung, a piano professor at the group's university, is loveless, a partnership kept up for appearances. Lee Sun-jae is twenty, poor, and works as a motorcycle courier. He has taught himself the piano. When Joon-hyung has him play for Hye-won, both recognise a rare talent, and Sun-jae goes to the university to study under Joon-hyung.
He falls in love with Hye-won, and she, who has spent her life managing other people's feelings, finds that she has feelings of her own. They play duets, and the piano becomes the language of the affair. They become lovers, meeting in his small flat.
Around them the Seohan family turns on itself. The chairman's daughter, Seo Young-woo, resents Hye-won; his second wife, Han Seong-sook, who chairs the foundation, is at war with the daughter. When prosecutors arrest the chairman, the family presses Hye-won to take the blame for the money she handled, and she refuses. In public she and Joon-hyung play the happy couple, even in a magazine interview with Sun-jae in the room. Seong-sook and Young-woo leak her misdeeds to the press, investigators search her home, and Joon-hyung brings the police to Sun-jae's flat and has them both charged with adultery, then still a crime in South Korea. Hye-won buys their release with a back-room deal and is soon in favour again. Disappointed in her, Sun-jae leaves the university and gives a farewell concert with friends who are leaving too. She listens from the back, unseen.
On the eve of becoming chairwoman of the foundation, she gives it all up. She divorces Joon-hyung and, in court, admits her part in the family's corruption, saying she had treated even herself as a tool for success. She goes to prison. When Sun-jae visits, her cellmates have hacked off her hair; she jokes about it, thanks him for changing her and tells him he is free to go. He says he will wait, whether it takes one year or ten. In the last scene he sets out to pursue his music, telling the empty flat that he will be back.
Starring
Kim Hee-aeas Oh Hye-won
Planning director of the Seohan Arts Foundation, forty, who keeps a rich family's secrets and falls in love with a twenty-year-old pianist.
Oh Hye-won’s story
Hye-won has made herself indispensable to the Seohan family, and the chair of its foundation is almost in reach. She gave up music herself long ago. She hears Sun-jae's gift the first time he plays for her, and their duets become an affair she tries to keep alongside her ambition. When the family tries to make her the scapegoat for the chairman's secret funds, she fights back, and after the adultery charge she cuts a deal and returns to favour. Then, with the chair finally hers, she gives it up. She hands the prosecutors the evidence, divorces Joon-hyung and tells the court that she had treated even herself as a tool for success. In prison, her hair hacked off by her cellmates, she tells Sun-jae he is free to go. He says he will wait.
Yoo Ah-inas Lee Sun-jae
A poor twenty-year-old courier and self-taught piano prodigy who loves Hye-won without calculation.
Lee Sun-jae’s story
Sun-jae makes his living as a motorcycle courier, and no one has ever taught him the piano. Joon-hyung takes him on as a student, and he falls in love with Hye-won. They play duets, he scrubs his small flat clean to give her somewhere to sit, and they become lovers. When she escapes the adultery charge with a back-room deal and returns to power, he is disappointed in her. He leaves the university, gives a farewell concert with friends who are leaving too, and asks her to come. In court he watches her confess. When she tells him through the prison glass that he is free to go, he says he will wait, one year or ten. In the last scene he sets out after his music, telling the empty flat he will be back.
Park Hyuk-kwonas Kang Joon-hyung
Hye-won's husband, a piano professor at Seohan University more concerned with his standing than his marriage.
Kang Joon-hyung’s story
Joon-hyung teaches piano at Seohan University, resents a colleague's success and puts up with the open contempt of the chairman's daughter, Young-woo. Sun-jae is his great discovery, and he brings him to play for Hye-won. When he senses the affair, he hides it from Young-woo and tells his wife to end it before anyone finds out: then he will forgive her, and he will never agree to a divorce. Learning that she has arranged, behind his back, for his rival to help Sun-jae study in Germany, he turns on her for the first time. At last he follows her to Sun-jae's flat, comes back with the police and has them both charged with adultery, telling her that everything she owns would not be enough. In the end she divorces him.
Kim Hye-eunas Seo Young-woo
The chairman's daughter, head of the group's arts centre, who resents Hye-won and helps bring her down.
Shim Hye-jinas Han Seong-sook
The chairman's second wife and chairwoman of the foundation, at war with his daughter and wary of Hye-won.
Why it matters
Secret Love Affair reverses the age gap that television usually takes for granted, a woman of forty and a man of twenty, and then declines to make that the scandal. Its deeper subject is class and service. Hye-won has built her life as the capable woman who keeps a rich family's secrets, and she has come to treat herself as an instrument. Sun-jae has nothing to offer but his talent and an honesty she has forgotten. The affair shows her what her life has cost, and the ending sends her to prison not as punishment for loving him but as the price of no longer serving anyone. The series won the 2014 Baeksang Arts Awards for its direction and its screenplay, and was developed from an original idea in Kaori Ekuni's novel Tokyo Tower. It leaves a harder question open: whether it is fair to ask a man of twenty to be someone's way out.