It has been a while since I truly watched a Kdrama that had it all: romance, drama, thriller, and psychological horror elements all in 16 episodes. What made it even better was that Queen of Tears never tried to take itself too seriously, despite dealing with heavy topics and balancing cheesy Subway product placement promos amidst a feuding chaebol family.
Queen of Tears Review
Queen of Tears is a Kdrama with many facets.
It begins as a tale of love gone sour between Baek Hyun woo, a talented graduate of SNU, and Hong Hae in, the Chaebol heiress of the Queens Group department stores.
Although it is not explicitly stated, we learn that the once in-love couple grew apart due to a miscarriage experienced by Hae in before the start of the show. As such, Hyun woo moved into the baby’s nursery when Hae in unceremoniously had the room dismantled without informing him. After that, the two’s relationship remained strained into the present day.
The patriarch of the family, Hae in’s grandfather Hong Man dae would like to leave the business to Hae in, as her only living brother Soo cheol is an idiot without any business acumen. The rightful male heir Beom Seok had been exiled from the family for refusing to go to jail for his father’s corruption crimes in the past.
Meanwhile, Hae in’s father Beom jun would like Hae in to conceive a female child within a year’s time so that he has a cute granddaughter to play with. I should note that aside from Hong Man dae, Hae in, and her husband Hyun woo, literally nobody else in the main chaebol family does substantial work of any kind.
Beom jun, who should honestly be the presumptive heir behind his estranged older brother, does nothing but sit around putting puzzles together, and feeding his deformed pet snail. His wife Seon hwa relishes nothing more than looking down her nose at people less fortunate than herself, and openly punishing her daughter Hae in because she blames her for the death of her eldest child – more on that later.
Hong Soo cheol gets swindled into scheme after scheme in search of a business plan that would impress his grandfather. Despite both his grandfather and father knowing that he keeps getting taken advantage of, rather than educating and correcting Soo cheol’s mistakes in a conductive way, they cover his failures up while talking amongst themselves behind his back about how much of an idiot he is.
Usually, the correction of Soo cheol’s mistakes are passed off to his sister’s husband, Hyun woo to clean up.
In the Queen’s family despite it being a patriarchy, all of the men who marry into the family are treated like dogs and servants to the bloodline.
They are seemingly on call all hours of the day (and night) at the discretion of the family’s pleasure, and sign prenups that they will receive nothing if the marriage dissolves – and are even threatened with reputational ruin and forced destitution if they even think about leaving.
Given the situation, Hyun woo is sadly (but understandably) excited when he finds out Hae in will die in three months from cancer. Speaking with one of his lawyer friends, the two devise a plot for Hyun woo to con Hae in into rewriting her will based on manipulating her affections.
Somewhere along the way, Hae in’s relationship with her parents (especially her mother) further deteriorates and she begins to only rely on Hyun woo for support. Realizing his feelings he long thought were dormant resurfaced, Hyun woo decides to stay with Hae in for real this time. Keeping the signed divorce papers in a locked drawer in his separate room while living with a family that does not respect personal boundaries.
You’d think that would be the gist of the plotline for the Kdrama, but four episodes later – it devolves into chaos and an entirely new genre all together.
A Broken Family Unit
As I mentioned above, the Hong family doesn’t really look out for one another as they should. They are too self-absorbed into their own nonsense to notice a plot to take down their family from the inside decades in the making unfurling.
After his wife died, Chairman Hong began dating the help, a housekeeper named Mo Seul hee. In these types of dramas, usually the mistress changes her name and ingratiates herself, or her son, into the chairman’s family because she is upset the illegitimate child is not on the official family registry (and therefore entitled to the chaebol family’s fortune).
This was not the case. Here, Seul hee literally wormed her way into Chairman Hong’s family for 25 years not because she loved him or wanted revenge of any sort – Seul hee literally just thought he was an easy mark.
Seul hee orchestrates a boating accident one day where Hae in and Su wan were supposed to perish. By an act of fate, Hyun woo ends up saving Hae in when they were children from drowning that day, despite the two not knowing until much later towards the end of the series after they have reconciled their marriage.
With only one child out of the way, Seul hee takes a page out of Little Women and creates an orphanage to use the children there for her ulterior motives. Using the orphanage as a cover, she abandons her own son Yoon Eun Seong in favor of finding him new parents using the orphanage.
She then gifts him a scholarship using the Chairman’s money to leave Korea and study abroad after she has the new parents murdered for abusing Eun Seong, and burns down the orphanage and murders its president to cover her tracks for the crimes she committed.
A little girl who was abandoned by her birth mother at the orphanage, Cheon Da hye, takes a liking to bullying Hong Soo cheol. Seul hee must have noticed this, because along with employing a therapist who occasionally moonlights as a psychic, they set it up so that Da hye will become Soo cheol’s wife, and keep him under control for their plans to humiliate and take down the family.
They even sabotage the mandatory blood test results the family uses to prove lineage before being added to the family registry to make sure Soo cheol had no legitimate heir with Da hye by blood.
Did I mention that Seul hee’s son Eun Seong returns to Korea after having shady dealings with Middle Eastern oil tycoons, and again attempts to date Hae in (as he did in the past) because he is absolutely obsessed with her, and wants to “own” Hae in at his own detriment?
In tandem, all of these people work together with Seul hee to steal Queens Group’s wealth for themselves and when necessary – keep the family isolated by eliminating people like Hyun woo from their collective atmosphere. Even if Hyun woo was somebody who deep down, didn’t initially have the family’s best interests at heart and really just wanted to save himself from a life of destitution and social ruin.
If anything, Queen of Tears is a cautionary tale about who you let into your circle – and stresses the importance of familial bonds and remaining humble even in your elevated status and wealth.
Without Hyun woo in Hae in’s life, she never would have made it past childhood and would have remained completely out of touch with regular working people in her adult life. In turn, the Queen’s Group department store would have been swindled out of the Hong family’s hands sooner had Hyun woo not intervened (even if it was based on selfish reasons).
Do you think Queen of Tears is Korea’s version of commentary on the conglomerate (chaebol) families that rule their country?
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☆ In Asian Spaces
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