A Business Proposal Korean Office Titles Explained

Business Proposal makes a rather awkward workplace situation look like a romantic comedy: an employee goes on a blind date and discovers that the man across from her is her company’s CEO.

But the Korean dialogue carries another layer of workplace information. Characters are identified not only by their names, but also by titles such as 사장님 (sajangnim), 실장님 (siljangnim), and 부장님 (bujangnim).

If you’re unfamiliar with Korean office titles, these expressions can start to sound interchangeable. They aren’t.

A person’s title can tell you about their position, responsibilities, and the level of formality in a conversation. And sometimes a small change in how someone is addressed reveals something that an English translation cannot fully preserve.

This guide uses the 2022 SBS K-drama version of A Business Proposal as its reference. The workplace positions below come from SBS’s published character information, rather than assumptions about every edition of the story.

Spoiler level: Opening premise and workplace relationships. No romantic endings or major later developments.

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Who Is Who at GO Food?

Start with the people, not a complicated corporate organization chart.

Workplace positions in the 2022 A Business Proposal K-drama

Character	Korean position	English explanation
Kang Da-goo	회장 (hoejang)	Chairman; Tae-moo’s grandfather and a senior figure in the business group
Kang Tae-moo	사장 (sajang)	Company president or chief executive
Cha Sung-hoon	비서실장 (biseo siljang)	Head of the executive secretarial office; Tae-moo’s close aide
Yeo Eui-ju	부장 (bujang)	Department head or senior departmental manager
Gye Bin	차장 (chajang)	Deputy department-level manager, commonly below a bujang
Kim Hye-ji	사원 (sawon)	Staff employee

These assignments are documented in SBS’s drama character-relationship coverage and its introduction to Cha Sung-hoon’s role.

Shin Ha-ri works on the food-development side of the company. SBS identifies her as a senior researcher, while the other food-development colleagues have titles such as bujang and chajang.

That distinction is important: a research role and a managerial rank are not automatically the same thing.

The English explanations in the table are practical approximations. They are not official one-to-one equivalents in every company’s organizational structure.

Why Is Tae-moo Called Sajangnim?

사장 (sajang) refers to a company president or chief executive. The National Institute of Korean Language’s Korean-English Learners’ Dictionary defines the position in terms of representing a company and being responsible for its affairs.

Add the respectful suffix -님 (-nim), and you get 사장님 (sajangnim).

The suffix is not a separate job rank. It changes how the person is addressed.

That means two related expressions serve different purposes:

• 강태무 사장 — President Kang Tae-moo, identifying his position.
• 사장님 — a respectful way of addressing or referring to the company president.

The official Korean-English dictionary entry for -님 confirms its honorific function.

In English subtitles, some of this distinction may be handled through context, a title, or a person’s name. A translation can communicate who the boss is without reproducing every Korean form of address.

For A Business Proposal, that matters because Tae-moo is not merely a wealthy stranger whom Ha-ri happens to meet. He is also the person at the top of her company’s management.

His professional title keeps that second relationship visible, even when the situation is unmistakably romantic.

Chairman and President Are Not the Same Title

The drama also has Kang Da-goo, Tae-moo’s grandfather.

SBS identifies Da-goo as 회장 (hoejang), meaning chairman, while Tae-moo is the company’s 사장 (sajang).

It’s tempting to translate both as “the boss,” but the distinction helps explain the family-business setting.

The grandfather is a senior figure associated with the wider business group. Tae-moo is the executive running the company at the center of Ha-ri’s workplace.

These are two different positions, even though the two characters are family.

In a corporate setting, 회장님 (hoejangnim) and 사장님 (sajangnim) identify different offices. In a family conversation, the relationship between grandfather and grandson introduces a completely different way of understanding the same people.

That overlap is particularly useful in a romantic comedy where marriage expectations and company authority keep intersecting.

The hierarchy also explains why a request from Tae-moo’s grandfather may carry weight beyond an ordinary family suggestion.

It is both a family situation and a story involving people who occupy powerful business positions.

Siljang vs. Chajang: The Two Titles That Are Easy to Mix Up

This is where the Korean vocabulary gets more interesting.

Cha Sung-hoon and Gye Bin have different jobs, but their Korean names and titles can look confusing to a new reader.

Cha Sung-hoon — 비서실장

Sung-hoon’s full name is 차성훈.

His surname is 차 (Cha).

His position is 비서실장 (biseo siljang), referring to the head of a secretarial office. SBS describes him as Tae-moo’s close executive aide.

When discussing that position, 실장 (siljang) is the key title, and the longer form specifies the secretarial-office function.

It should not be confused with the CEO’s position.

Being a trusted executive aide can place someone close to important decisions without making that person the company’s president.

Gye Bin — 차장

Gye Bin is another member of the food-development workplace.

His surname is 계 (Gye). His rank is 차장 (chajang).

Here, 차장 is a job title, not a surname.

So compare these two illustrative forms of address:

• 차 실장님 — Mr. Cha, addressed by his siljang title.
• 계 차장님 — Mr. Gye, addressed by his chajang rank.

These are examples of how Korean surname-plus-title address works, not quotations from a specific episode.

In the first expression, 차 is a person’s surname. In the second, the visually similar 차 is part of the managerial title 차장.

One little syllable; two very different jobs.

There’s a second distinction here, too.

Siljang identifies responsibility for an office or organizational function, while chajang commonly identifies a managerial rank. You cannot confidently place every siljang above or below every chajang without knowing the actual company’s structure.

Korean employers don’t all organize job titles in precisely the same way.

Bujang, Chajang, and Sawon: Reading Ha-ri’s Department

Ha-ri’s food-development workplace includes Yeo Eui-ju, Gye Bin, and Kim Hye-ji.

SBS describes their positions as 부장, 차장, and 사원, respectively.

The words communicate different levels of responsibility.

Bujang (부장): A senior departmental position. The Korean-English Learners’ Dictionary describes a bujang as someone responsible for a department or division.

Chajang (차장): A deputy managerial rank. In a conventional Korean corporate rank structure, it is generally below bujang. Its English rendering can vary among companies.

Sawon (사원): An employee or staff member. This is not a synonym for “intern,” and it does not establish exactly how long the person has worked there.

The difference between the positions is useful even if you don’t memorize a full rank ladder.

When Yeo Eui-ju is identified as bujang, the title communicates departmental authority. Gye Bin’s chajang rank places him in a different management position. Hye-ji’s sawon designation identifies her as staff rather than a department head.

Those titles tell us something about the working relationship before anyone explains an organizational chart.

They also make Ha-ri’s concern about her professional reputation easier to understand.

The people around her aren’t simply a group of interchangeable coworkers. They belong to a workplace with identifiable positions and reporting relationships.

What Does -nim Tell You About a Relationship?

You may notice a pattern:

사장님, 실장님, 부장님, 차장님.

Each has 님 at the end.

The suffix adds respect to the form of address. But it does not automatically mean that the speaker admires, likes, or feels personally close to the person being addressed.

That is an important distinction.

Someone can speak respectfully because of a person’s position, even when their private feelings are complicated.

Similarly, using a job title doesn’t mean two people have no personal relationship outside work.

Korean forms of address can reflect the immediate social setting as much as the relationship itself.

A title used during a meeting and a familiar expression used outside the office may reveal different sides of the same connection.

English can communicate those differences through tone and context, but it doesn’t always preserve the exact Korean words.

So when a character switches from a formal title to a more personal form of address, the change may be worth noticing.

It isn’t proof of romance. It can simply mean that the relationship has more than one layer.

Why Sung-hoon’s Familiar Language Matters

Cha Sung-hoon offers a particularly useful example of someone occupying more than one social role.

In the company, SBS identifies him as Tae-moo’s executive aide and biseo siljang.

Yet SBS’s coverage of the early episodes also records Sung-hoon referring to Tae-moo with the word 형 (hyeong).

The word commonly refers to an older brother, but it can also be used by a man for an older male with whom he shares a familiar, affectionate relationship. The Korean-English Learners’ Dictionary documents both uses.

Calling someone hyeong does not, by itself, establish that the two are biological brothers.

This is a different kind of social information from sajangnim.

One expression foregrounds corporate position. The other can indicate a familiar personal relationship.

The same two people can have both.

That is why translating Korean dialogue is not always a matter of matching one Korean word to one English word. A change in address can change what the listener understands about the relationship.

The Office Hierarchy Is Part of the Comedy

The central joke of A Business Proposal does not require viewers to know Korean corporate ranks.

Ha-ri goes to a marriage-oriented blind date under someone else’s identity, only to encounter the CEO of her own company.

The situation is already wonderfully inconvenient.

But the workplace titles make the problem more specific.

Ha-ri is an employee whose everyday life is connected to a company. Tae-moo occupies a position with much greater institutional authority. Their unexpected meeting crosses a boundary between private dating and professional identity.

Understanding sajangnim helps make that boundary visible.

Likewise, the titles within Ha-ri’s department give the supporting workplace characters a clearer structure. They aren’t simply there to react whenever something embarrassing happens.

The drama uses a recognizable office hierarchy as a setting for an exaggerated romantic situation.

That does not make its CEO romance a realistic guide to workplace relationships.

Real relationships between senior executives and employees can involve conflicts of interest, unequal influence, and professional boundaries that a romantic comedy handles through fictional conventions.

The Korean terminology gives the story a particular social texture. It doesn’t turn the fictional relationship into a model for everyday corporate behavior.

What to Listen for When Watching

You don’t need to learn the entire Korean office hierarchy to enjoy A Business Proposal.

Three small things are enough.

First, notice when someone uses a job title instead of a personal name. It may tell you which professional relationship is most relevant to the conversation.

Second, distinguish rank from responsibility. A bujang or chajang is identified by managerial position, while a siljang title points to responsibility for a particular office or function.

Third, pay attention when the same person is addressed differently in a personal setting. A formal workplace title and a familiar relationship term can describe different aspects of the same connection.

These details won’t change the central plot.

They can, however, make the office scenes easier to follow and show how the drama uses distinctly Korean forms of address alongside a broadly familiar romantic-comedy premise.

For the original web novel, webtoon adaptation, and broader background, visit the A Business Proposal hub.

If you’re choosing between the three storytelling formats, the A Business Proposal novel vs. webtoon vs. K-drama comparison explains where each version fits.

Sources and Language References

• SBS — A Business Proposal Character Relationships — confirmed company positions and character connections.
• SBS — Cha Sung-hoon Character Introduction — the executive secretary role.
• SBS — Episode 5 Coverage — example of familiar address between Sung-hoon and Tae-moo.
• National Institute of Korean Language — 사장 — company president or chief executive.
• National Institute of Korean Language — 부장 — departmental position.
• National Institute of Korean Language — -님 — honorific suffix.
• National Institute of Korean Language — 형 — older brother and familiar address.