Two weeks into its run, tvN's Monday–Tuesday romantic comedy My Bias, My Boss has done the thing every mid-tier Korean broadcast drama is trying to do right now: it climbed instead of sliding. The fifth episode, which aired on Monday, August 17, pulled an average nationwide viewership rating of 4.0 percent with a peak of 4.7 percent, according to Nielsen Korea — and it finished No. 1 in its time slot among cable and general programming channels, both nationwide and in the Seoul metropolitan area.
The metro numbers were slightly stronger than the national ones: a 4.1 percent average with the same 4.7 percent peak. The measurement covers paid platforms combining cable, IPTV and satellite. But the figure that actually matters to advertisers is buried a line lower in the same report: among viewers aged 20 to 49, the show ranked No. 1 across all channels in both regions — terrestrial networks included. A cable romantic comedy beating the big three broadcasters in the demographic they sell against is not a rounding error.
The climb has not been a straight line. The premiere on August 3 opened at 4.2 percent, then the second episode dropped hard to 3.1. Episode three recovered to 3.9 percent, a 0.8-point jump. Episode four slipped again to 3.6. Then episode five landed at 4.0. Five episodes in, the show has found a floor around 3.6 and a ceiling it keeps testing.
The series is adapted from Seong Eun's webtoon of the same title, which has recorded more than 660 million global views. It is co-written by Lee Young and Kim Ji-an, directed by Park Ji-hyun, and produced jointly by Studio Dragon, Studio N and Npio Entertainment. Kang Hoon plays Kang Ha-gi, the chief executive of a fashion startup called APPELLO. Kim Hye-jun plays Nam Da-reum, the new hire who joined the company chasing proximity to her favorite idol and discovered, inconveniently, that the CEO she once assaulted while drunk defending said idol is now her boss. Cha Woo-min plays Lee Chan, the D.N.X member who inspired her to apply in the first place and who is almost never actually in the office.
Episode five put that setup to work. APPELLO's proposal for the Korea Heritage Service's K-Wave Project leaked to a rival, SE Trading, and Da-reum and Ha-gi took a business trip to develop a replacement product built around traditional Korean knotting. They found a master craftsman's workshop; the craftsman was cold and unreceptive; Da-reum kept trying, and as she tied a dongshimgyeol knot herself, she came to understand his point that "even a single small knot requires countless hours and tremendous care." The day ended with Ha-gi admitting there was someone he had feelings for, Da-reum unable to hide her nerves — and Chan walking in at exactly the wrong moment.
Why It Matters
Four percent is a number that requires translation. In the era when a single hit series could hold half the country at once, it would have read as a catastrophe. In 2026, on a cable channel, against a fully fragmented audience that watches on phones and catches up on streaming, a stable 4 with a 4.7 peak is a solid, unspectacular, genuinely healthy result. The metric that used to measure a nation's attention now measures a slice of it.
What complicates the read is that tvN set its own impossible benchmark. The channel's Monday–Tuesday and weekend slots have produced some of the biggest Korean dramas of the past decade, and the ones that break out break out enormously. Measured against that history, 4.0 percent looks modest. Measured against what a first-run cable romantic comedy without a marquee lead can realistically expect in a streaming-saturated market, it looks like the show is working. Both readings are fair, and the gap between them is the whole current anxiety of Korean broadcast television.
The production credits explain more than the ratings do. Studio Dragon is CJ ENM's drama studio. Studio N is a webtoon publisher's production arm. Put them on the same title with source material that already cleared 660 million views and you have the assembly line that now supplies most of K-content's mid-budget output: proven intellectual property, validated by an audience that already read the story, converted into a drama with a built-in promotional base and an international streaming window attached before it airs. The risk is pre-managed. So, arguably, is the ceiling.
Then there is the knot. Weaving maedeup — the Korean decorative knotting tradition — and a Korea Heritage Service initiative into a workplace romantic comedy is not accidental. It is soft-power packaging inserted at the level of plot rather than set dressing, and it works precisely because the show does not lecture about it. The craft becomes a business problem, then a character problem, then a scene between two people who are figuring out they like each other. That is a more durable way to export a tradition than a documentary about it.
The Reaction
Most of the conversation coming out of episode five is about the triangle, which is exactly what the writers were aiming for. Da-reum spent five episodes organizing her entire professional life around Chan, the idol, and then spent one business trip discovering that the boss she has been carefully managing is a person she enjoys being around. The show has been patient about it, which is rarer than it sounds in a twelve-episode format.
Chan's entrance at the close of the episode did the structural work. He appeared just as Da-reum and Ha-gi had cleared up the misunderstandings between them, and the episode ended on all three exchanging glances. It is an old device, but the timing was clean, and it reframed the back half of the series: this is no longer a story about a fan getting closer to her bias, it is a story about whether she still wants to.
The performance drawing the most credit is Kim Hye-jun's. Da-reum began as the comic rookie who keeps making mistakes, a type that usually stays a type. Over five episodes the character has opened up without the show announcing that she was changing, and the calibration — nervous, then defensive, then quietly not defensive — has been the reason the romance lands rather than the setup.
The skeptical case is worth stating plainly. A 4.0 percent rating is still below the show's own 4.2 percent premiere, which means that after five episodes the series has not yet won back everyone who sampled it on night one. The dip to 3.1 in episode two suggests an audience that was testing rather than committing. Time-slot leadership among cable and general programming channels is a real achievement, but it is also a comparison against a field that is not especially crowded on Monday and Tuesday nights. The show is winning. It has not yet broken out.
What Comes Next
The series is built as a twelve-episode run, two episodes a week, which puts it almost exactly at its midpoint. That leaves roughly six episodes and a finale expected in the first half of September, and it means the love triangle has to resolve fast enough to avoid a stall and slow enough to feel earned. International viewers are following along on Rakuten Viki in supported regions, which is where the show's global numbers actually accumulate — and where a title like this one usually outperforms its domestic rating.
Three things are worth watching. First, whether episode six and beyond can clear the 4.2 percent premiere mark; that would confirm growth rather than recovery. Second, whether the K-Wave Project storyline gets a real resolution or quietly becomes a device to keep the leads in the same rooms. Third, the competitive picture: the second half of August is dense with Korean releases, including high-profile streaming titles, and a Monday–Tuesday cable romantic comedy holds its audience by being reliable rather than by being loud.
Closing Thoughts
There is something quietly encouraging about a show like this doing well. It is not a thriller, it has no murder, nobody's identity is stolen, and the stakes are a fashion startup's proposal and whether two people admit they like each other. For a few years the assumption in Korean drama has been that the mid-budget romantic comedy was being squeezed out — too small for a global streaming swing, too soft for a ratings play. My Bias, My Boss is a modest argument that the format still has a floor, and that the floor is around four percent and a first-place slot finish.
The craftsman's line about the knot is the show's thesis whether or not it meant to be. A knot that takes countless hours and tremendous care is a strange thing to put at the center of a genre built for speed, and the honest counterargument is that heritage plots like this one function as soft-power placement — a cultural agenda smuggled into a romantic comedy. That reading is not unreasonable. But it only becomes placement if the scene doesn't work, and this one did, because it was about two people being changed by watching someone else be patient. Five episodes in, that is a fair description of the show itself.
한글 요약
tvN 월화드라마 최애의 사원(My Bias, My Boss)이 8월 17일 방송된 5회에서 닐슨코리아 기준 전국 평균 시청률 4.0%, 최고 4.7%를 기록하며 케이블·종편 동시간대 1위에 올랐습니다. 수도권은 평균 4.1%, 최고 4.7%였고, 광고주가 가장 중요하게 보는 20~49세 시청층에서는 지상파를 포함한 전 채널 1위를 차지했습니다. 8월 3일 첫 회 4.2%로 출발한 뒤 2회 3.1%로 크게 떨어졌다가 3회 3.9%, 4회 3.6%를 거쳐 5회에 4.0%까지 회복한 흐름입니다.
이 작품은 성은 작가의 웹툰(글로벌 누적 6억 6천만 뷰 이상)을 원작으로 하며, 이영·김지안 작가가 공동 집필하고 박지현 감독이 연출했습니다. 스튜디오드래곤·스튜디오N·엔피오엔터테인먼트가 공동 제작했고, 강훈(패션 스타트업 아펠로 대표 강하기), 김혜준(신입사원 남다름), 차우민(아이돌 그룹 D.N.X 이찬)이 출연합니다. 5회에서는 국가유산청 K-웨이브 프로젝트 제안서가 경쟁사에 유출되면서 다름과 하기가 전통 매듭을 활용한 신제품 개발 출장을 떠나고, 장인의 공방에서 동심결을 직접 매듭지어 보며 두 사람의 거리가 좁혀지는 전개가 그려졌습니다.
총 12부작 구성으로 현재 딱 중반을 지났으며, 9월 상반기 종영이 예상됩니다. 해외 시청자는 라쿠텐 비키를 통해 시청하고 있습니다. 다만 5회 4.0%는 여전히 첫 회 4.2%에는 못 미치는 수치여서, 남은 회차에서 자체 최고 시청률을 넘어설 수 있을지가 관전 포인트입니다. 4%대 시청률이 낮아 보일 수 있지만, 시청 환경이 완전히 분산된 2026년 케이블 편성에서는 안정적인 성적으로 읽힙니다.