Queen of Tears, the ongoing rom-com K-drama that has taken the world by storm, surpassing legendary K-dramas like Goblin, Crash Landing On You and Reply 1988, and has received its highest rating yet. With a solid 21.6% nationwide rating and gaining almost half a million viewership on Netflix, making it to the Top 10 list, Queen of Tears has everyone on their knees.
As anticipation for the finale this week grows, here is a detailed explanation of Hae-in and Hyun-woo’s stormy love!
Stage 1: Hae-in and Hyun-woo’s history
Hae-in and Hyun-woo have their first contact with each other when Hyun-woo, who was an ace of his high-school swim team, saves Hae-in from drowning. Hae-in doesn’t really see him though, and imagines that her older brother saved her, sacrificing his own life. This incident would haunt her forever and would become a major rift in Hae-in and her mother, Seon-hwa’s relationship.
Years later, Hae-in is leaving to study abroad when Hyun-woo is admitted to her high school. The two meet near the school gate when Hae-in is leaving school for good. She falls and Hyun-woo helps her by putting a cute band-aid on her bleeding knee. She leaves in a hurry, leaving behind her MP3 player with an elaborate ‘H’ written on it. Hae-in would later tell this story to Hyun-woo when she would be staying at Yongdu-ri, his childhood home.
Stage 2: BaekHong meet again and fall in love
Many, many years later, Hyun-woo meets Hae-in, yet again, when she’s chaotically working as an intern. Hyun-woo takes pity on her, worrying that she would be fired, which Hae-in comically interprets as love. After looking after her, Hyun-woo does start liking her and confesses to her on a rainy day, flaunting the number of cows his family own (35!) and his credentials as a Seoul University law school graduate, without knowing that she’s a chaebol heiress.
His confession melts Hae-in’s heart. Oh, and Hyun-woo giving up his umbrella for her even though she had a driver might have been the cherry on the top. When she leaves in her car and spots Hyun-woo taking the bus, she asks the driver to follow the bus so she can stare at him from the window. Yes, she’s smitten.
Hae-in and Hyun-woo spend many days using the subway, which she, of course, has never been on before, and he comically assumes that she’s had a tough life. He shows her the best spot for the sunset.
Later, Hyun-woo tells his family in Yongdu-ri that he wants to marry Hae-in regardless of her educational or familial background. Later, his family remember how happy he was that day. However, when he finds out about Hae-in’s true identity, he ghosts her, turns in his resignation and goes back to his hometown, to hide perhaps.
But Hae-in doesn’t give up when she wants something, so she arrives in a helicopter and they reconcile, as she promises that she’d never let him cry. They get married against Seon-hwa’s wishes. In their wedding video, Hyun-woo says that he wants to stay together with Hae-in forever, while she responds that she’d be too busy to watch the video again in the future but if she could, she’d be travelling the world and enjoying life with Hyun-woo beside her.
Stage 3: When the marital bliss shatters
However, over time and especially after a particular incident, Hae-in and Hyun-woo become strangers living in the same house. Firstly, Hae-in’s family is too overbearing and demanding of Hyun-woo as they treat him like their personal jack-of-all-trades. On top of that, the couple lose their child and Hae-in, being Hae-in, coldly removes everything in the nursery and feigns ignorance.
This is the tipping point for the kind-hearted Hyun-woo and he decides to sleep separately from that day forward. The two butt heads multiple times a day, at home, and in the office where Hae-in is Hyun-woo’s boss. Gradually, the couple drift so far apart that Hyun-woo cannot bear it any longer and wants a divorce. Only, he cannot get one so easily.
This is the time that Hae-in discovers that she’s chronically ill and might die in 3 months. She tells Hyun-woo, who is secretly overjoyed at this news since he can be free from her and her family without any complications or repercussions.
Stage 4: Hae-in and Hyun-woo’s temporary reunion
After Hyun-woo finds out about Hae-in’s illness, he pretends to care about her and starts acting considerate. This is briefly due to the fact that Hyun-woo’s lawyer friend has sprouted the idea of getting on Hae-in’s good side so she can re-write her will, this time including Hyun-woo. In Germany, when Hyun-woo follows her, she later discloses that she wrote her will on Seon-hwa’s insistence, so that she could marry Hyun-woo.
Their days of bliss and relative peace are shattered when Eun-seong manages to disclose Hyun-woo’s plan for divorce by staging Hyun-woo as a whistleblower who reported Chairman Hong, Hae-in’s grandfather, to the prosecution on charges of embezzlement. Hae-in is shattered when she learns the truth.
The two come back to South Korea. Hae-in decides to divorce Hyun-woo, not only for herself since she doesn’t want to live the rest of her days in limbo, but mostly because she realises how much she and her family have made Hyun-woo suffer. And Hae-in’s divorce attorney? Well, that’s Vincenzo of course!
Amidst this divorce drama, Seul-hee drugs the chairman who ends up in a coma. Eun-seong and Seul-hee capture the Queens Group and kick the Hongs out of their house with all their assets frozen. This is when Hyun-woo brings the entire family to Yongdu-ri.
At Yongdu-ri, Hae-in and Hyun-woo rekindle their love, after she receives news that she can undergo surgery. Now, that she has hope to live, she agrees to withdraw her divorce petition. The two then go to Berlin for her treatment which is when Hae-in learns about the caveat associated with the surgery: she will lose all her memories in the process.
Hae-in’s not ready to let go of her memories, which she thinks is what makes her herself. Now, around this time, Seul-hee has sent some people to kill Hae-in and while Hyun-woo is out for an errand, a truck smashes the car that Hae-in is supposed to be in. Fortunately, she isn’t inside and survives. But Hyun-woo is briefly traumatised thinking Hae-in is dead. So, she finally agrees to undergo the procedure and writes an elaborate diary of her life for Hyun-woo to read to her and remind her who she is when she wakes up.
Now, while she’s in the operation theatre, Eun-seong makes Hyun-woo the scapegoat for the land broker’s murder and Hyun-woo is promptly arrested by Interpol. Instead of Hyun-woo, Hae-in wakes up to find Eun-seong and conveniently forgets the truth about Hyun-woo and her family, and we are back to square one.
Stay tuned for episodes 15 and 16 of Queen of Tears to know how their story finally pans out!
Are you watching Queen Of Tears? What are your predictions for the ending to this one? Let us know in the comments below!