Lottery winner, CEO, intern: Office is back in K-content
Posters for “Even Lottery Winners Go to Work” / Courtesy of Tving
Latest hits expand boundaries of office story in playful and entertaining ways
Even lottery winners go to work, and so do interns. In the past, the workplace in K-content was often portrayed as a place people wanted to escape. Workplace bullying by bosses, office politics, excessive workloads, competition and the struggle to survive were recurring themes, giving rise to dramas such as “Misaeng,” which continues to be talked about years later. In 2026, however, a new wave of content is heading back to the office.
From Tving original series “Even Lottery Winners Go to Work” and the film “The Intern” to Season 3 of Coupang Play’s “Office Workers,” the workplace is the setting for all three. But while earlier office dramas focused on realistically depicting the joys and hardships of working life, recent productions are looking at workplace realities in new ways by combining the familiar office setting with fantasy, generational change and comedy.
So why the office again now? It would be too simple to view this as merely the return of the office drama, because these productions are using the workplace in fundamentally different ways. The most notable example is Tving's original series “Even Lottery Winners Go to Work.”
A scene from “Even Lottery Winners Go to Work” / Courtesy of Tving
Released on Tving on Sept. 10, “Even Lottery Winners Go to Work” follows ordinary office worker Gong Eun-tae (Lee Jun-hyuk), who wins the lottery but chooses to keep going to work rather than quit his job. The very premise — that he does not leave the company despite winning 1.3 billion won ($910,000) — turns the conventions of the traditional office drama on their head.
In a typical workplace fantasy, winning the lottery would likely be followed by a resignation letter and an immediate departure from the company. “Even Lottery Winners Go to Work,” however, takes the opposite approach. The protagonist keeps going to work even after becoming wealthy. This suggests that the workplace is no longer portrayed solely as a place people are forced to endure to make a living.
For Gong, the lottery winnings are both a ticket out of the company and a source of freedom that allows him to view the workplace from a different perspective. Before winning, he had to watch his boss’s mood, worry about relationships with colleagues and navigate office politics. After winning, he begins to look at the same company and people in a different way. Ultimately, the series is less concerned with the question, “Would you quit your job if you won the lottery?” than with a broader question: “If we did not have to work simply to make a living, how would we view work?”
Choi Min-sik plays the role of a low-ranking intern after 37 years as an office veteran in his latest film “The Intern.” Courtesy of Warner Bros. Korea
This is where the changing nature of recent office stories becomes particularly apparent. On the big screen, the film “The Intern” uses the same setting in a completely different way. Released on Sept. 16, the Korean adaptation of the 2015 Hollywood film of the same name has been reinterpreted for Korean workplace culture. Han So-hee plays Sun-woo, a young CEO running a fashion brand, while Choi Min-sik plays Ki-ho, a silver intern with 37 years of work experience.
The generational relationship portrayed by Robert De Niro and Anne Hathaway in the original has been placed in a more realistic Korean workplace environment. The pairing of a young CEO and a veteran who returns to the workplace as an intern goes beyond a simple generational conflict, showing how people who have lived through different eras form relationships within the same organization.
What stands out in the Korean version of “The Intern” is the reversal of hierarchy and experience. Ki-ho, who has spent 37 years in the workforce, is the newest and lowest-ranking intern at the company. Sun-woo, meanwhile, occupies the highest position in the organization but struggles alone with the pressure of success and the exhaustion of life. By showing that workplace rank and life experience do not necessarily correspond, the film turns the familiar hierarchy of office stories on its head.
Choi has also said he wanted to make the Korean version of Ki-ho a distinctly Korean character rather than simply copying the original character played by De Niro. Instead of imitating De Niro’s portrayal, he said he focused on capturing the sensibility of a Korean middle-aged man. In this way, the workplace in “The Intern” is less a space of competition than a place where generations meet and relationships are formed. The setting remains the same, but the nature of the conflicts that arise within it has changed.
A scene from Coupang Play’s “Office Workers" / Captured from YouTube
On streaming platforms, meanwhile, the workplace is being turned on its head through more direct comedy. Coupang Play’s “Office Workers” Season 3 is an office sitcom that takes characters and situations familiar from real working life and exaggerates them for comic effect. The series centers on incidents involving employees of DY Planning, combining realistic workplace culture with raw improvisational humor.
Season 3 continues to explore the changing relationships that develop within the workplace with the arrival of college student supporters, clients and new employees. More recently, it has also introduced new variables into the fixed office setting by featuring guest appearances from stars including Park Sung-woong, Park Myung-soo and Jung Joon-ha.
The workplace depicted in “Office Workers” is less like a documentary-style portrayal of a real company than a kind of playground where viewers can see reflections of their own working lives. Characters who may be a boss to one person, a junior colleague to another or an overbearing client to someone else appear in exaggerated forms, turning the stresses of real life into comedy.
When the three productions are viewed side by side, a common thread in recent office stories in K-content becomes clearer. The workplace is no longer portrayed solely as somewhere people suffer or need to escape.
“Even Lottery Winners Go to Work” uses an employee who continues to work after achieving financial freedom to reconsider the meaning of work. “The Intern” looks at relationships within the workplace by breaking down boundaries between generations and ranks. “Office Workers” uses the workplace itself as a source of comedy.
The film “The Intern” follows the office life that unfolds across generations and ranks when Ki-ho (Choi Min-sik), left, a silver intern with 37 years of work experience, joins the company of Sun-woo (Han So-hee), who has emerged as a rising force in the fashion industry just three years after launching her brand. Courtesy of Warner Bros. Korea
If promotion, competition and success were once the central themes of office stories, the picture is now more complicated. People continue working even as they consider quitting, a young CEO may have achieved success but remain unhappy, and the hardships of office workers are turned into comedy. With the premise that success at work is not the only goal in life, office stories are also beginning to ask a wider range of questions.
The approaches vary — from the fantastical luck of winning the lottery and the generational reversal of a 37-year veteran becoming a silver intern to a sitcom exaggerating situations that could happen in any real office. But they share a common trait: they are expanding the boundaries of the office story in playful and entertaining ways.
This article from the Hankook Ilbo, the sister publication of The Korea Times, is translated by a generative AI system and edited by The Korea Times.