Chief of Staff consisted of 2 seasons of 10 episodes each, with a total of 20 episodes aired to date. Synopsis (including spoilers): Season 1 Jang Tae-joon (Lee Jung-jae) was an aide for assemblyman Song Hee-seop (Kim Gap-soo), helping Assemblyman Song to eliminate all political rivals to be promoted up the political ladder. Tae-joon actually had a secret plan to remove all corrupted politicians after becoming an assemblyman, including Assemblyman Song who was leading a group of politicians, prosecutors and businessmen to maximise their profits through government projects e.g. upgrading projects for old neighborhoods. Tae-joon worked closely with assemblywoman Kang Seon-young (Shin Min-ah), whom Tae-joon had a secret relationship with, to to find evidence of corruption and then to formulate plans to force the corrupted politicians to step down.  Before Tae-joon could realise his agenda, Assemblyman Song’s another aide Oh Won-shik (Jung Woong-in) informed Assemblyman Song that Tae-joon kept all the evidence that could expose Assemblyman Song’s corruption. From then on, Assemblyman Song did whatever he could to force Tae-joon into dead end, including indirectly causing Tae-joon’s good friend and mentor, Assemblyman Lee Seong-min (Jung Jin-young), to commit suicide to protect Tae-joon. Tae-joon then destroyed the last piece of evidence to show Assemblyman Song’s relationship with the construction company in charge with the upgrading project of the market in order to gain Assemblyman Song’s trust and to replace Assemblyman Lee’s as the new assemblyman for his region. Just as Seon-young secured a copy of finance report that could prove Assemblyman Song’s illegal financial transactions, Seon-young’s aide Go Seok-man (Im Won-hee) was found dead in his car, and all evidence indicating that Seok-man had committed suicide due to job burnout. At the same time, Seon-young suspected that Tae-joon was involved in Seok-man’s death. Season 2 Tae-joon was elected into the National Assembly by replacing Assemblyman Lee’s position. Assemblyman Song also became the Minister for Justice. He seemed to have parted from Seon-young and be working for Minister Song. Yoon Hye-won (Lee Elijah) became Tae-joon’s personal aide, while Lee Ji-eun (Park Hyo-joo) return from maternity leave to aid Seon-young together with Han Do-kyeong (Kim Dong-joon). Assemblyman Song soon realize that Tae-joon was still secretly gathering evidence against him and causing many of Minister Song’s supporters to be brought down from their positions. In fact, Tae-joon used the “bribery” from Lee Chang-jin (Yoo Sung-joo), the representative of the construction company in-charge of the upgrading project for the market and in cahoots with Minister Song, to find a temporary site for the previous owners of the market to continue their business. Seon-young then found out that Tae-joon was not involved in Seok-man’s death and both worked together to gather evidence. At the same time, Minister Song also appointed Choi Kyung-chul (Jung Man-shik) as the chief prosecutor, and provided many “evidence” to Kyung-chul to investigate on Tae-joon’s corruption case. Kyung-chul did not side with Minister Song as he thought the evidence were too easy to obtain, but Kyung-chul also did not believe that Tae-joon was uncorrupted. When Minister Song tried to remove Kyung-chul from the position of chief prosecutor as Kyung-chul was disobedient to his “requests”, Kyung-chul instead helped Tae-joon and Seon-young within his authority as Kyung-chul did not want to be involved in politics. Ji-eun and Tae-joon got seriously injured on different occasions in their race to stop Minister Song from destroying evidence. They suspected there was a mole in either Tae-joon’s or Seon-young’s office, with Tae-joon’s new aide Yang Jong-yeol (Jo Bok-rae) being the biggest suspect (although he was not). Upon tracing Minister Song’s financial transactions also led Seon-young to find out that her father was involved in money laundering, but Seon-young decided to continue to pursue the matter even if she had to lose her National Assembly’s badge. When all issues were resolved, Tae-joon decided to admit to his corruption charges and to let Seon-young to become the election candidate for his region. Tae-joon then received an offer to become the President’s Chief of Staff. Comments: bearcatchong: Will there be a season 3 for this drama? Will it be Tae-joon against a corrupted President or Tae-joon trying to protect the President from the political enemies? The drama series was on the aides trying to eliminate corrupted politicians and also how the aides protected and defended their superior, the Assemblyman/Assemblywoman. While it was welcoming to see the good triumphing against the evil, I was thinking if time and effort was largely used to fight against the evil instead of trying to improve the lives of the public, the National Assembly (and perhaps the government) would be a non-essential place for most people. It would really be disheartening if the taxpayer’s money would just be spent for the politicians to fight among themselves (not to mention corruption as well) rather than focusing on useful policies for the public, if not the disadvantaged. Hopefully, drama will remain as a drama, the story in this drama will not become the norm in real life. Overall, I find this drama quite enjoyable, although you are quite likely to be also annoyed at the dirty tricks that were played to hinder our poor leads. Jung Woong-in ahjussi had acted well in this drama to make his character as annoying as possible. kooriyuki: Show is a striking contrast to My Fellow Citizens, which also was about politicians but that was a comedy. The realism is strong in this, and while it may be a serious theme Show is exploring, the unfolding of the story was interesting and plenty of action involved. I’m glad Tae-joon did not become a real monster in his bid to bring down the monsters in the Assembly, although he did some really crazy things and almost got himself killed. With that neverending news about government corruption in South Korea, I’m honestly unsurprised that the writer of this drama was inspired by similar real life persons in the National Assembly and/or events. Will Chief of Staff have Season 3?Unfortunately, Chief of Staff Season 3 doesn't have the renewal. In other words, it is yet to be officially renewed by Netflix. The delay in renewal is China's Wuhan-emerged coronavirus and its transmutation into a global pandemic. |
