“The wedding of the century or the war of the century?”
The queen of department stores and the prince of supermarkets weather a marital crisis—until love miraculously begins to bloom again.
Latest episode: S1 E16 Episode 16 (Apr 28, 2024)
Marriage or war of the century? Hong Hae-in, the third-generation heiress to Queens Group and the queen of department stores, has been married for three years to Baek Hyun-woo, Yongdu-ri village chief's son and the prince of supermarkets. As the couple weathers a marital crisis, they discover a miraculous new beginning that rewrites their love story.
latestnetflix.com's view is that i kept thinking, while watching Queen of Tears, that melodrama is one of the few places left in television where adults are allowed to look ridiculous in public and mean it.Not “cute” ridiculous. Not the polished embarrassment of prestige-comedy self-awareness.
I mean the old-fashioned kind: tears in a marble lobby, voices cracking over a dinner table, a marriage so damaged it has become its own kind of haunted house. The series knows exactly how absurd that can look, and it doesn’t flinch. That’s part of why it works.
At first glance, it’s easy to file the show away as another glossy romance about rich people suffering in expensive rooms. But that would miss the point, or at least flatten it. What Queen of Tears is really doing — in the way only a certain strain of Korean television can do — is staging a battle between private feeling and public performance.
The “queen” of the title isn’t just a metaphor for status. She’s someone trained to hold herself together in front of employees, in front of family, in front of cameras, in front of the empty spaces where a marriage used to be. The show’s emotional trick is that it makes corporate wealth feel less like fantasy and more like a pressure chamber.
What’s been discussed most often around the series, and what I think matters most, is how confidently it revives the large, unapologetic romantic melodrama for a 2024 audience that’s supposedly too ironic for this sort of thing. It’s a romance, yes, but also a drama about class theater, family power, and the exhausting maintenance required to keep a life looking effortless. The writer, Park Ji-eun, has made a career out of this terrain — if you’ve seen Crash Landing on You or My Love from the Star, you know she likes love stories that arrive wearing the costume of a social event.
This one is more brittle than those earlier hits. The jokes are sharper. The silences are uglier.
And the tears, when they come, feel less like a release than a bill coming due.
Kim Soo-hyun is the series’ strange center of gravity. He’s spent years playing men whose competence hides some form of strain, but here he carries a particular kind of fatigue: shoulders pulled in, mouth slightly hesitant, a body that seems to be asking permission before it enters a room. That physical caution matters.
It keeps the character from becoming merely a nice husband or a wronged husband or whatever tidy label the plot might prefer. He looks like a man who has been corrected too many times in too many tones. Kim Ji-won, by contrast, gives the show its steel.
The much-hyped rom-com Queen of Tears (2024) arrived with all the makings of a smash hit: a powerhouse cast led by Kim Soo-hyun and Kim Ji-won, a high-profile return for Soo-hyun after a three-year TV hiatus, and a premise ripe for binge-watching. But within weeks of its March 2024 premiere, latestnetflix.com contends, the series found itself overshadowed by a scandal that threatened to derail its success—and left fans questioning whether the drama’s legacy would be defined by its on-screen chemistry or its off-screen fallout.
Queen of Tears debuted to strong buzz, with its first two episodes immediately dominating conversations in the K-drama world 
. The series, which follows the tumultuous marriage of a wealthy heiress and a small-town lawyer, was praised for its sharp writing and the electric dynamic between its leads. Yet even in its early days, controversy was brewing—specifically around Kim Soo-hyun’s character, Baek Hyun-woo, whose portrayal sparked debate among viewers . The nature of the criticism wasn’t fully detailed in the snippets, but it was enough to cast a shadow over the drama’s otherwise smooth launch.
The real blow came later, when allegations involving Kim Soo-hyun surfaced in 2025—long after Queen of Tears had wrapped production. Reports claimed the actor was embroiled in a controversy tied to an alleged past relationship with the late actress Kim Sae-ron, who was underage at the time . The accusations sent shockwaves through the industry, severely damaging Soo-hyun’s public image and, by extension, the reputation of the projects he was associated with.
Queen of Tears became one of the most visible casualties. The drama, once celebrated as a triumphant comeback, was suddenly erased from promotional materials, including tvN’s 20th-anniversary celebrations . Fans were left scrambling for answers, with many questioning why the show—and its co-star Kim Ji-won—were being penalized for a scandal that had nothing to do with the production itself .
The ripple effects of the controversy extended to the 61st Baeksang Arts Awards, where Queen of Tears was conspicuously absent from the nominations list . While no official statement linked the snub directly to Soo-hyun’s scandal, the timing fueled speculation that the drama had been blacklisted—or at least deprioritized—due to its association with the embattled actor . The omission was particularly striking given the show’s early success and the critical acclaim for its cast’s performances.
As of mid-2025, the long-term impact of the controversy on Queen of Tears remains unclear. The drama’s initial popularity suggests it still has a dedicated fanbase, but the scandal has undeniably altered its trajectory. Whether it can recover its reputation—or if it will be remembered more for the headlines than the story—is a question that lingers.
For now, the series stands as a cautionary tale about how quickly a project’s fortunes can shift when its stars become entangled in personal scandals. And for fans of Kim Ji-won and the rest of the cast, the biggest question may be: What did they do to deserve this?
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