Is Secretary Kim’s name Mi Soo or Bi Soo? tvN writes it as Bi Soo in the corner screen but subbers are spelling it as Mi Soo. The actors are also pronouncing it as either Bi or Mi. Clarity, please.

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    Secretary = Bi-so

    Her actual name is Mi-so, so when they say “Kim Mi-so” they are calling her by her name. When they say “Kim Bi-so” they are saying “Secretary Kim”. 🙂

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      See, that was the smart thing to say. *whacks forehead* I forgot about the translation for Secretary so I blabbered about how and why the “M” and “B” get mixed up.

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        Hahah no, your explanation made sense and helped explain why the name is so clever and confusing.

        I did make a romanization mistake, though: Secretary is actually “bi-seo” (비서), not bi-so (비소). Mi-so is indeed 미소, though. The words are still close enough to be punny and confusing.

        But what even are Korean romanization rules?

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          Oh, yes. *throws romanization out of the window* (Honestly though, I should stop doing explanations for things. I’ve been doing podcasts and lessons for Korean and Tagalog and French and Japanese and they’re all flying out of the window, heeeeeeeeeeeelp.)

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            LOL. No, don’t stop! I don’t even know Korean, I just know hangul and what I have picked up from K-dramas. 😂

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            @mindy But I get everything mixed up and then I confuse people further and it’s a messssss.. (I’m even messing up my essay, gif story, and oh shoot the fic it’s my turn shoot shoot shoot)

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          See, I figured there was some word play going on there but I couldn’t really pick up on it.

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      Thanks for the explanation!!! I thought it was a pronunciation thing. I know that B and M sounds can sometimes be interchanged or sound similar.

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    It’s alt moments like these that I wish I was fluent in Korean 😞

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    In general, especially when it’s the first “letter” in a word, Korean “m” can sound like “b”, because the natural way of moving their lips means that they don’t open their mouth as wide to say the letter, so it sounds a bit like “mb”, or sometimes just “b”.

    So it’s Mi Soo. 🙂 Sorry for the long explanation. Are the tvN subs auto-generated Korean subs, or?

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      Mi-So. Stop listening to me, I’m bad at explanations.

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      I don’t think so. I’m attempting to learn Korean and, if I like a drama enough, I’ll watch it without subs first to see if I can at least follow along well enough without subs. Bi Seo was confusing because of the similarity with the character’s name and the rule you explained above.

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