Yes, Business Proposal has a happy ending — it just skips the one scene a rom-com owes you

The SBS romantic comedy aired 12 episodes from February 28 to April 5, 2022, and became a hit far beyond Korea: on Netflix, it spent three weeks at No. 1 on the global non-English TV chart. It's adapted from HaeHwa's web novel and the webtoon drawn by Narak. Kim Se-jeong plays Shin Ha-ri, who goes on a blind date in place of her rich friend Jin Young-seo, in disguise, and discovers her date is her own company's CEO, Kang Tae-moo, played by Ahn Hyo-seop. He wants to marry the woman he thinks she is. Kim Min-kyu and Seol In-ah play the second couple, Tae-moo's secretary Cha Sung-hoon and Young-seo.

How it ends

Happily, for everyone who matters. Tae-moo finds out who Ha-ri really is, is hurt, and forgives her. His grandfather objects, then fakes an illness, and Ha-ri ends up nursing him. By the time it's over, both families accept the relationship.

Then the grandfather's health really does get worse, and Tae-moo takes him to the U.S. for treatment. He asks Ha-ri to come. She stays, to avoid office gossip, and promises to wait. A year of long-distance dating later, Tae-moo comes home with his grandfather's blessing and a ring, and proposes. She says yes.

The second couple gets there too. Young-seo walks away from her father's company after he tries to break them up, starts a business with Sung-hoon, and the two get engaged and move in together.

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The scene it skips

The wedding. Neither couple gets one on screen, and Korean viewers noticed. The finale drew an 11.4% nationwide rating, and the complaints came in right behind it:

• the series ends on a proposal instead of a wedding;
• the one-year time skip rushes the main couple's reunion;
• 12 episodes felt too short, and viewers asked for 14 or 16.

The show is called Business Proposal, and it stops at the proposal.

Where the wedding went

It's in the webtoon. The source material gives Ha-ri and Tae-moo a full wedding and a tropical honeymoon, and it keeps going from there:

• Ha-ri's father refuses the marriage at first, until Tae-moo wins him over working at the family restaurant.
• The honeymoon is where the story's steamiest scene takes place. The drama kept that scene and moved it earlier, before the engagement.
• At Ha-ri's wedding, Young-seo reveals she has put off a double wedding because she's pregnant. The drama drops the pregnancy entirely.

The webtoon also has the proposal the other way around. There, it's Ha-ri who proposes to Tae-moo, to convince his company's board that the relationship is real.

Previously we wrote: Hotel Del Luna: do they end up together? The writers' answer has a loophole