Queen of Tears Episode 1 Recap

Who's in the cast:
Kim Soo-hyun as Baek Hyun-woo
Kim Ji-won as Hong Hae-in
Kwak Dong-yeon as Hong Soo-cheol
Kim Kap-soo as Hong Man-dae
Lee Mi-sook as Moh Seul-hee
Jung Jin-young as Hong Beom-jun
Kim Jung-nan as Hong Beom-ja
Kim Joo-ryoung as Grace Ko
Jeon Bae-soo as Baek Du-gwan
Hwang Young-hee as Jeon Bong-ae
Jang Yoon-ju as Baek Mi-seon
Oh Jung-se as Lee Min-woo (special appearance)

Hong Hae-in and Baek Hyun-woo sit before a camera crew for a couples interview. The press called theirs the wedding of the century, an heiress marrying a junior employee, and three years on Hyun-woo calls himself a lucky man. Hae-in waves off the rumor that he married her for money, then claims her looks give her nothing to hide while the crew laughs nervously. Hyun-woo describes days of bliss: waking up together, breakfast together, commuting together.

Five years ago, Hae-in explains, she came home from studying abroad and interned at Queens Department Store, where her father was CEO. She remembers a co-worker who kept helping her as a man with a crush. Hyun-woo cuts in to deny it: she kept kicking the photocopier, and he worried about the machine, then about the intern everyone expected to be fired.

On a rainy evening he offers her his umbrella and makes his pitch. He lists a Seoul National University law degree, more than 30 cows and a studio on an annual lease. If she is fired, he will support her. He likes her. Her answer arrives with a car door: she has a driver.

In Hae-in's telling, he quits and ghosts her once he learns who her family is, so she summons him outside, and a helicopter comes down. In the interview, that moment is remembered as an angel arriving. The next question is whether the feeling lasts; the answer comes after a hesitation: yes, absolutely, they are living their best lives.

A settlement agreement and a family meeting

Elsewhere, lawyers trade the news that Hyun-woo is getting divorced and wants one of them to represent him. Kim Yang-gi is hailed as Korea's top divorce attorney, but the job gets pushed onto a colleague, Choi Cheol-seung. The worry: Hyun-woo's wife's aunt has divorced three times, and each ex-husband's lawyer was ousted from the profession. Asked why anyone would leave a Queens Group heiress, Yang-gi says she is crazy.

At Queens Department Store, Hae-in's executives fret that sales of 880 billion won fall short of one trillion. The brand Hercyna will not open a store below that line. Rival Royal Department Store boasts that its CEO will join the One Trillion Won Club by year's end and land a Hercyna store. Hae-in orders the weakest brands cleared out, and her staff explain that the Law Department, specifically Mr. Baek, said no.

Summoned to her office, Hyun-woo explains that tenants have invested about 500 million won in their spaces. Eviction suits are hard to win under a changed law, he adds, and sales has been quietly starving weak brands of support. Hae-in asks whether the store is a charity and whether she looks like she wants his opinion, then orders him to evict and to sue if they resist.

In the elevator, she accuses him of tipping off one longtime tenant so she could not remove him. He defends the man as the hardest worker in the building. She tells him to be good to the person by his side instead, and the argument ends on whether they are even at each other's side. One of them sets a talk in the lounge within the hour, and a divorce settlement agreement fills the screen.

Texts about waiting pile up, and the next summons is to the family room. A newspaper profile of the couple is under way, and a rumor that they are separating comes up. Hyun-woo is pressed to handle a KFTC issue for Queens Mart.

Then comes the baby: an appointment with a Dr. Joo is set, and once the child is born, Hyun-woo is to go to Boston for an MBA. When he objects, he is told he does not get a say. Hae-in's father, Hong Beom-jun, says nobody can order him to have a baby, but a name is already chosen for the granddaughter: Hong Su-bin, with her mother's surname.

Alone, Hyun-woo asks if he is really expected to have a child and go abroad alone. Other people will raise the child, he is told, so it is convenient. Hae-in says she wants a baby only if it is necessary. After a call to make sure the article calls him a Seoul National University law graduate, Hyun-woo asks her to stop booking interviews like that. She can tell them herself he is a perfect husband, he says, since it is all made up anyway.

At home, Hong Soo-cheol is grumbling about his press coverage when he takes a hit out of nowhere. Hae-in corners him and warns that if he speaks to her husband like that again, she will kill him. Afterward, he calls her a witch who badgers her own husband.

Later, a friend tells a drunk Hyun-woo that the others want him to stay married, then notices he is crying. Hyun-woo sobs that Hae-in once blushed and called him cute, and that it ruined his life. He plucks petals to ask whether he will divorce, and they always land on no divorce. The friend, who still has to buy diapers, says he only wants a house, because concrete never nags, and leaves him crying.

The memorial service

Men sneer that the Queens son-in-law is a butler who cleans up the family's messes and married for money. Hyun-woo visits Hong Beom-ja, his wife's aunt, in jail. She is there for grabbing Moh Seul-hee by the hair, she says, because she believed Seul-hee reported her for embezzlement. Beom-ja blames Seul-hee for her mother's death, vows revenge and boasts that her three ex-husbands have all left Korea. Divorce has no goodbyes, she tells him; only death does. When she says divorce suits marriage better than happiness does, he quietly agrees, then waves it off.

Outside Queens Town in Hanil-dong, Yongsan-gu, Seoul, a reporter covers the memorial service for Yang Mi-suk, the late wife of Chairman Hong Man-dae. It also covers the return from Hawaii of his eldest son, Hong Beom-seok, after a long feud. Inside, the sons-in-law fry jeon and initiate a newcomer, Choi, who married a cousin last month. He learns that in noble houses the men prepare memorials and that the chairman loves tradition. The married-in men grumble that the Hong ancestors are served by a Kim, a Yu, a Cho and a Baek, and someone advises Choi to run while he can.

Seul-hee, the chairman's girlfriend, who has lived in the house more than 20 years, declines to wear the hanbok prepared for her to such an unusual service. When the daughter-in-law who arranged it worries that people will say she pushes Seul-hee around, Man-dae walks in demanding to know who is pushing whom. By the end, Seul-hee is going to the service in the hanbok after all. Afterward, one of the women sums it up: forget a scary mother-in-law. "Try a girlfriend-in-law."

Beom-ja arrives to thunder and a tiger's roar on the soundtrack. Hyun-woo got her out on orders not to let her fall ill in jail, and apologizes for not waiting until after the service. At the altar, Beom-ja tells her late mother that her father jailed his only daughter over his girlfriend, then calls her brother a coward for bowing to Seul-hee. She scolds Soo-cheol for never visiting her in jail, and his mother snaps that Beom-ja did not raise him. Told that the death was a heart attack, Beom-ja insists Seul-hee broke her mother's heart. She tells her late mother not to bother coming, since the family is full of liars.

At the gate, reporters shout questions at Beom-seok, back in Korea for the first time in 19 years, as he stands in the rain. In the kitchen, a son-in-law mentions that today is Hyun-woo's father's 60th birthday, which he is missing for the memorial. Meanwhile, Director Jo, at his 20th memorial for Ms. Yang, tells Vice-Chairman Beom-jun he is resigning. Beom-jun wishes him luck, then orders rumors spread and charges filed so Jo stays tied up in court, because the goal is shame. When Hyun-woo suggests holding to principles, Beom-jun explains that crushing one deserter warns the rest, and that those who leave get a knife in the back, and Hyun-woo answers yes.

A psychiatrist and a will

At a psychiatrist's office, Hyun-woo admits that he cannot eat and that what he most wants is a divorce. He lists the household: his wife's parents, grandfather, newly released aunt, and brother-in-law's family, all under one roof, with a 9 p.m. family meeting and 15 memorial services a year that the sons-in-law run. At work his wife is his boss. He hates his in-laws, but he hates her more, because she never cares how hard he works or whether he eats.

He remembers her wedding vow, in her voice, that she would never let a tear fall from his eyes, and calls himself an idiot for believing it. He cannot divorce, he explains, because his father-in-law knifes anyone who turns on him. The knife is figurative, he adds, before saying: "I'd rather have a real knife." Leaving with a strong prescription, he takes a call under the name WIFE with a gush of love, and the line goes dead mid-sentence.

Grace Ko runs a beauty shop and matches the children of good families. She tells a client that Hae-in married on her own and regrets it, and predicts the queen will kneel to her when it is time to remarry. The elevator doors open on Hae-in. Grace switches to sweetness and offers a new serum. Hae-in replies that she will not visit the shop, that Grace should keep her distance, and that her casual speech and touching make her uncomfortable.

Grace then meets Hyun-woo with the story of a Daegyeong Group son, killed in a car crash, whose will leaves his wife nothing. She reveals that Hae-in wrote one too before the wedding: her assets go to Queens, and he gets nothing. Hae-in never wanted to marry for love, Grace claims; she wanted someone handsome, well-educated and easy to push around. He tells her that is enough.

Hae-in, on the phone with a doctor, says she cannot go in herself. She catches Hyun-woo and tells him to come with her, since his schedule is clear and the car is waiting. He refuses without asking where.

Home to Yongdu-ri

In Yongdu-ri, a card recalls the village prodigy's promotion, and a villager assures Baek Du-gwan that people support his second term as village foreman. Jeon Bong-ae finds the two men stuck in the mud with the cultivator and drives it out herself. Riding along, Du-gwan sees voters in the garlic and corn fields. Bong-ae wants him to quit, but he says he is keeping the balance, since Hyun-woo's in-laws hold up the economy but lack a political base.

She slams the brakes when she spots Hyun-woo. Du-gwan asks where his daughter-in-law is; Hyun-woo has come alone, and he has not eaten. At home the family feeds him, and someone announces that the youngest son is here.

Word reaches the Queen's Hair Salon that Hyun-woo is back, and someone orders that he not be allowed to slip away: he missed his father's 60th birthday. Hyun-woo agrees it went too far, then tells his father and mother he is divorcing Hae-in. He denies there is another woman. He just does not like his life. His parents tell him they are not happy every day either, and that is marriage. Du-gwan adds that he loves Bong-ae, but love alone would not keep him alive.

Baek Mi-seon accuses Hyun-woo of thinking only of himself, since their parents sold a cow to send him to university and she never went. Someone points out she skipped class. At the Yongdu-ri Supermarket, Hyun-woo hears how happy his father has been since the marriage, celebrating whenever Queens stock rises. A divorced son would be the village's new scandal. Hyun-woo asks whether this is about rent on a boxing studio and a child's tuition, likening himself to a daughter traded away by her father for 300 bags of rice. He is told he is worth more, and leaves while Mi-seon calls after him to stay the night.

Hae-in's news

Later, a safe beeps open and shut, and the settlement agreement is on screen again. On a stormy night, Hyun-woo starts to say he has something to tell Hae-in, but she insists on going first. She is going to die. "I only have three months left." She reminds him she asked him to come along: she was at the doctor's.

She asks what he wanted to say. He insists it can wait, then stammers an apology for today and for much else, and promises to treat her right. Sniffling, he asks whether she is really dying, whether he will be left alone. She tells him to believe her. Through tears, he tells Hong Hae-in he loves her.

The final scene returns to their wedding. A photographer asks the groom to record a message for himself ten years from now. Hyun-woo hopes he is not divorced, says all he needs is Hae-in, and reminds himself not to make her cry. Hae-in grumbles that she will be too busy to watch it. Then she tells her future self she will be thriving, healthy and at the top of her career, still with Baek Hyun-woo.

Thoughts

The opening interview is a con, and the rest of the episode takes it apart piece by piece. By Hyun-woo's own account, the perfect-husband, infatuated-couple story is made up for the newspaper. What makes the setup work is that the Hongs are funny and frightening in the same breath. The sons-in-law frying jeon while two men beg off with excuses is pure comedy, and then Beom-jun calmly orders a departing director's life wrecked for daring to resign. That scene explains Hyun-woo's real-knife line better than any confession could.

Hae-in is harder to read, and I suspect that is deliberate. We mostly see her through other people's resentment: Hyun-woo's, Soo-cheol's, Grace's. Grace's version of the marriage is damning, but Grace had just been frozen out by Hae-in in an elevator, so I am not taking her account on trust. Against it sits a woman who threatens her own brother for disrespecting her husband, tries to bring that husband along to her doctor, and on her wedding day pictures herself healthy ten years on.

As for the ending, Hyun-woo has a settlement agreement he never mentioned and a wife who says she has three months. His tears look real, but earlier in the episode he told a psychiatrist he hates her and that divorce is the only way he survives. The episode does not say whether the apology comes from grief or from guilt, and I am curious how long he can keep the papers and the promise under the same roof.

Up next: Queen of Tears Episode 2 Recap. See every episode in the Queen of Tears episode guide.