Yuju's resignation is a glitch in Taekyung's perfect world. To keep his best asset, the icy CEO offers every perk imaginable, but his tactics soon shift from business to seduction. When the contract ends and the heart takes over, can he win back the love he already pushed away?

Incentive has a story by Jung-min and art by CU-TTO, based on a work by Summer Jeong. English localization by Manta Comics. Published by Manta Comics (July 4, 2026). Rated M.

Erica Friedman
Rating:

I don't mean to be reductive, but a mean male boss and “strong” female lead is pretty bog standard in romance. Taekyung has left her job under the “tyrannical” (read “childish”, demanding, blah, blah) Mr. Son, but when she returns, it's as if she's never left. Mr. Son can't keep a secretary because he's obviously a petulant jerk, and despite her having left a while ago, work is left undone when she comes to visit. Everyone is delighted she's returned.

This is a modern version of Pride and Prejudice, without the intelligent banter, as so many romances are. Taekyung is smart and strong, but when it comes to Mr. Son, she's suddenly incapable of resisting his non-verbal scowling. It's not compelling, but it is completely readable.

The art is solid; if you like the scowling dark Darcy type taken to an extreme and a Lizzie that is only able to resist up to a point, it'll be right in your wheelhouse. The art is exactly what you might expect. Mr. Son is dark-haired, “emotionless”—apparently adult petulance is not an emotion— and Taekyung is blandly attractive. It's not that the art is inadequate. It's that the characters have little call to be pretty beyond business wear and nudity. I find it difficult to find the brooding guy type interesting or attractive, so unlike Taekyung, I find Mr. Son less than intriguing.

This is a very contemporary tale in a post 50 Shades of Grey world. A jerk of a guy with power is seen as unapproachably attractive; any rival for his affection will attack the female lead instead of the male lead. It ends up feeling very high school in a corporate boardroom. There is little plot here, other than a shunned fiancé and general glowering. Fans of adult life straight romance and sex will undoubtedly find Incentive far more interesting than I did.

Rebecca Silverman
Rating:

I think I liked this story better when it was called A Business Proposal or What's Wrong with Secretary Kim?, or possibly when it was manga and called Midnight Secretary. Incentive is part of a subgenre of contemporary romance stories set in an office where a secretary and her boss (or sometimes his boss) form a romantic and sexual relationship. Oftentimes the secretary really wants to quit, but her boss uses his body to reel her back in. There's surprisingly little variation on the theme, and between the three manhwa, that variation really hinges on level of explicitness. (Midnight Secretary involves vampires, so it gets to claim it's more exciting.)

This particular iteration of the story gets an 18+ rating for its spiciness. Opening with a sex scene before going back in time, it lets us know that the “incentive” of the title is Mr. Son's body in exchange for Ms. Wu continuing to work for him. Of course, that's not precisely what she asked him for as a condition of continued employment: she wanted him to be sweet to her like he is to his dog. (There are obviously issues with that statement, but the manhwa isn't interested in exploring them, at least not in these early chapters.) He jumps right to sexual favors, which either means that he's utterly unscrupulous, has a thing for her as well, or both. I'm landing on that last choice; his actions reek of the man who just figured out a way to get what he wants without fear of reprisals.

The main problem with this – and I have enjoyed the setup before – is that the characters are remarkably one-note. There's just not much to them beyond their paper-thin excuse to have sex. We're told a lot of things about them, but all we really see is him taking advantage of her work skills and then of her request for an incentive. I suppose if you just want to see pretty Korean comic characters screwing, this is fine. But if you prefer a bit of emotional development and plot with your smut, there are better places to find it. This is firmly in the mediocre range for the subgenre, and if you want to read a better version of the plot, I'd recommend What's Wrong with Secretary Kim? instead.