Seol In-ah of ‘Love in Disguise’ and other K-drama actresses in gender-bender roles

In KBS2’s sageuk romance The King’s Affection, available on Netflix, Park Eun-bin plays a woman living as Crown Prince Lee Hwi. Born Dam-i, she is Lee Hwi’s twin sister. Because boy-girl twins are deemed inauspicious, an order is given for the baby girl to be killed. Instead, she is smuggled out of the palace and grows up unaware of her royal blood.

Years later, the death of Lee Hwi changes the course of Dam-i’s life. To keep the secret of her survival and protect the throne, she is forced to take her twin brother’s place. Living as the crown prince means maintaining the pretence at every turn, whether she is dealing with treacherous ministers or fulfilling the duties expected of a future king, including producing an heir—an impossible task that could give her away.

Then there is the matter of Jung Ji-un (Rowoon), her royal tutor, who has no idea that the prince he serves is actually a woman and with whom she has fallen in love, leaving her caught between the life she is trapped in and the romance she cannot afford to pursue.

Kim You-jung’s career-defining role came in the sageuk rom-com Love in the Moonlight, playing Hong Ra-on, a young woman who has spent most of her life passing as a man under the name Hong Sam-nom. Deep in debt, she earns her keep penning love letters on commission and coaching clients through their courtships. A client’s love letter draws her to a rendezvous meant for a princess, but it is the princess’ brother, Crown Prince Lee Yeong (Park Bo-gum), who turns up instead. Neither realises who the other really is, and the encounter ends with the two of them trapped in a pit and Ra-on slipping away.

Unable to repay her creditors, they seize Ra-on and sell her off to the palace as a eunuch trainee. There, Lee Yeong recognises Sam-nom as the stranger he clashed with and finds an opportunity to settle the score, making the eunuch initiation process particularly difficult for the newcomer. Antagonism eventually gives way to romance, with the crown prince grappling with his growing attachment to his own eunuch. Ra-on, meanwhile, must guard her secret from Lee Yeong even as her own heart gets the better of her.

See more: 7 highlights from the ‘Love in the Moonlight’ cast’s 10th anniversary reunion

Long before Seol In-ah went undercover in Love in Disguise or Park Eun-bin ruled as Lee Hwi in The King’s Affection, Yoon Eun-hye starred as Go Eun-chan in MBC’s Coffee Prince. Among the earlier K-dramas to put a gender-bending romance centre stage, the 2007 series was a Hallyu hit and a cultural phenomenon.

Go Eun-chan is a tomboyish young woman holding down a string of odd jobs to keep her family afloat. When Choi Han-gyul (Gong Yoo), the heir to a food company, is ordered by his grandmother to turn around a failing coffee shop, he builds an all-male team chosen for their good looks and, mistaking Eun-chan for a boy, hires her too. Desperate for a steady income, Eun-chan agrees, keeping her real gender under wraps to hold on to the job.

For Han-gyul, the trouble is that he is falling for someone he believes to be a man, and he struggles to reconcile what he feels with his sense of himself, while Eun-chan must decide how long she can keep him in the dark. The resulting romantic comedy remains memorable for its tender, often funny take on attraction and the assumptions people make about love.

In the SBS romantic comedy You’re Beautiful, Park Shin-hye plays twins Go Mi-nyeo and Go Mi-nam. Mi-nyeo is a nun in training, while her brother has just landed a place in the idol group A.N.JELL, hoping that fame might lead the twins to their long-lost mother. With Mi-nam bound for corrective surgery in the United States, his manager turns to Mi-nyeo to secretly take his place, and she reluctantly agrees. She cuts her hair, adopts his identity and moves into the band’s shared accommodation.

Posing as Mi-nam proves harder than it looks, not least because of Hwang Tae-kyung (Jang Keun-suk), the band’s arrogant leader, who wants nothing to do with the new recruit. He soon discovers who she is and wants her gone, but she holds her ground, unwilling to abandon the search for their mother. Kang Shin-woo (Jung Yong-hwa), who had already guessed the truth, keeps quiet for her sake. As Mi-nyeo adjusts to life as a male idol, both bandmates begin to fall for her. Backstage antics, a love triangle and the pressures of maintaining a disguise make You’re Beautiful a lively gender-bender romantic comedy set in the world of K-pop.

Wrongly accused of killing her own family shortly before her wedding, noblewoman Min Jae-yi has no choice but to run. In tvN’s historical romance Our Blooming Youth, Jeon So-nee plays the fugitive who disguises herself as a man and eventually enters the palace as a eunuch named Go Soon-dol. Survival is only part of it: she is determined to clear her name and find out who really killed her family.

Her path leads to Crown Prince Lee Hwan (Park Hyung-sik), himself suspected of his brother’s murder and burdened by a mysterious curse. Wary of her at first, he strikes a deal: he will help prove her innocence if she helps lift the curse. As they investigate together, their uneasy alliance thaws into romance. With a heroine whose sharp intellect and deductive skills drive the story, Our Blooming Youth folds the gender-bender trope into a murder mystery.

From the palace corridors of The King’s Affection and Love in the Moonlight to the coffee shop in Coffee Prince and the corporate world of Love in Disguise, these K-dramas show just how many directions a gender-disguise story can take. The heroines, including Seol In-ah’s Kang Jae-hee, may have different reasons for concealing their identities, but each faces the same challenge: keeping up the act while their relationships, ambitions and feelings threaten to give them away.

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