Some K-dramas creep up on you. Queen of Tears (๋๋ฌผ์ ์ฌ์) arrived in March 2024 and simply took over โ first the living rooms of Korea, then the global non-English charts on Netflix. By the time its finale aired, it had become the highest-rated drama in the entire history of cable network tvN. If you are putting together a watchlist of modern Korean romance, this is one of the titles people will assume you have already seen.
What the show is about
At its heart, Queen of Tears is a marriage story told backwards. Baek Hyun-woo is a lawyer from a humble rural family who works as legal director at Queens Group, a sprawling family conglomerate. His wife, Hong Hae-in, is the third-generation heiress of that same chaebol dynasty and the CEO of its flagship department store. They are, on paper, a golden couple. In reality, their marriage has cooled to the point of quietly drifting toward divorce.
Then Hae-in receives a terminal diagnosis. The news upends everything, forcing the estranged pair to confront the mistakes that pulled them apart and, slowly, to rediscover why they fell in love in the first place. Around them swirl family power struggles and an old acquaintance of Hae-in’s who complicates matters further. It is part romantic comedy, part melodrama, and the tonal swing between the two is a big part of its charm. (We are keeping this spoiler-light by design.)
The leads and their chemistry
The whole thing rests on its two stars, and they deliver. Kim Soo-hyun (๊น์ํ) plays Baek Hyun-woo with a kind of weary tenderness, while Kim Ji-won (๊น์ง์) gives Hong Hae-in a brittle, imperious surface that keeps cracking to reveal something far more vulnerable underneath. Their push-and-pull โ sniping one moment, aching the next โ is exactly the sort of slow-burn reconciliation that K-drama fans live for.
The supporting cast rounds out the chaebol world nicely. Park Sung-hoon (๋ฐ์ฑํ) plays Yoon Eun-sung, an investor and old acquaintance of Hae-in’s. Kwak Dong-yeon (๊ณฝ๋์ฐ) is her younger brother and fellow Queens Group executive, Hong Soo-cheol, and Lee Joo-bin (์ด์ฃผ๋น) plays his wife, Cheon Da-hye.
Behind the camera
The script comes from writer Park Ji-eun (๋ฐ์ง์), already beloved for Crash Landing on You and My Love from the Star โ a pedigree that tells you a lot about the blend of swoon and spectacle here. Directors Jang Young-woo (์ฅ์์ฐ) and Kim Hee-won (๊นํฌ์) handle the visuals across 16 episodes (plus two special episodes), which originally ran March 9 to April 28, 2024.
Where it aired and how big it got
Queen of Tears aired on tvN as a SaturdayโSunday drama, streaming domestically on TVING and internationally on Netflix. And the numbers are genuinely remarkable. The finale averaged 24.850% nationwide (AGB Nielsen, paid-platform basis), making it the highest-rated drama in tvN’s history โ surpassing even Crash Landing on You, which had peaked at 21.683%.
On Netflix it became one of the most-watched Korean dramas, with the platform reporting roughly 682.6 million cumulative hours viewed and a stint atop the global non-English TV chart. Worth noting honestly: the “most-watched Korean drama ever” framing reflects Netflix’s own metric at the time and is best treated as a platform-reported claim rather than an independent record. The tvN ratings and the cast figures, by contrast, are well documented.
Filming locations worth knowing
Half the fun of Queen of Tears is its split between glossy chaebol interiors and warm countryside. The fictional rural hometown “Yongdu-ri” was filmed mainly in Yongyeon-ri, Mungyeong (North Gyeongsang Province) and Yuha-ri in Goesan (North Chungcheong Province). Hyun-woo’s mother’s “Yongdu-ri supermarket” was a built set in Yongyeon-ri, and the village hall scenes used the Naeeung Saemaul community hall in Mungyeong. The Queens mansion interior, the department store, and parts of the German hospital were purpose-built sets.
The production also traveled to Germany: Frankfurt’s Eiserner Steg (Iron Bridge) for the love-lock scene, Sanssouci Palace in Potsdam near Berlin, Berlin itself, and the TAOASIS Botanischer Duftgarten fragrance garden in Lage for honeymoon and flashback moments.
Whether you come for the high-gloss romance, the family intrigue, or the sheer scale of its success, Queen of Tears earns its place near the top of any modern K-drama list. Press play and keep tissues handy โ the title is not a joke.
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