The only drama I have watched involving a brain tumor is "That winter, the wind blows". I remember that I wondered what consequences it would have had on the heroine: loss of speech or memory, change of personality, and so on, but nothing happened. I just took it too seriously... 😅

Well I think Scent of a Woman was my first drama in which the main character had a terminal illness and as it continues, one can't help but root for her happiness (and his) in that she will eventually die after having done all she wanted to do. Despite some lacking things, it did have a sweet message and interesting characters.

I rarely watch dramas that don't contain romance and I hate sad endings. My motto is the flip side of "all is well that ends well". A bad (and sad) ending can ruin an otherwise good story for me. Needless to say, this means no melos, brain tumors, terminal illnesses for me.

The irony is that the first Kdrama I ever watched was I'm Sorry I Love You and to this day remains one of the very few melos I have seen. It was a powerful drama and I still remember how I felt then but I really really disliked the ending. Because despite the revenge plot and side stories (including his love for his mom) to me that drama is a romance that had a terrible ending.

I didn't know Choi Jin Hyuk had a bullet in his brain in Empress. One episode without him and all the crazy was enough for me to tune out. But I find it interesting that he ended up with two consecutive dramas where he was about to die (I did watch Devilish Joy).

Incidentally I watched Glass Slippers last week and am thankful that a) I don't watch melos b) dramas these days use these tropes lot less.

So ji sub's character in MiSa is so similar to Choi Ji Hyuk's character in TLE. I just hope Jang Nara doesnt do what the heroine in MiSa did at the end. Huhu

And the sense of urgency in Time was very much felt, even more when Kim Jung Hyun seems to be so affected by his role 😢

Nine is probably the most shiver-inducing and cleverly written drama about this exact trope. Which I enjoyed through and through.

OCN's recent GOD'S QUIZ: REBOOT, season 5, has an overarching revenge theme with a side of terminal illness. Kim Jae-won came across as a seriously psychopathic nutjob -- until the truly reprehensible villains were revealed. The show did a wonderful job of tying in cases from the first season, and from Doc Han Jin-woo's childhood back story. I haven't seen seasons 2-4, so don't know how much of his childhood had been revealed in earlier seasons. Throw in a main character's encounter with a Car of Doom and Doc Han's long-standing neurological condition, in addition to each week's case, and there's more than enough medical angst to annihilate one's fingernails.

Ryu Deok-hwan had a blast in the title role. He and Yoon Joo-hee as Detective Kang Kyung-hee, his old flame, have become one of my favorite low-key OTPs. The camaraderie of the Medical Examiner's team and their police colleagues is downright heartwarming. And Kim Jae-wook has an ingenious cameo. ;-)

...to everyone’s favorite Truck of Doom...

To be identified as the favorite plot device delivery vehicle, thank you, @missvictrix, thank you. 😭

Cheers to a new year of shattering characters onscreen for the pleasure of viewers offscreen!

I stayed away from makjang dramas a long time ago, but yknow one or two would sneak past in, and wholla, next thing I know, I’ve watched it from start to end, and sometimes I’d end up sobbing ugly. That was a what Innocent Man was to me. It legit checked off the troupes in makjang including brain injury. But I stuck through this drama because of Ma Roo and Eun Gi 😭😭😭😭 Their story was poignant yet so beautiful to me. I couldn’t drop this over the top makjang drama because of them - I wanted to see how well they’d survive all this.

I just loved how Ma Roo who was so devoted to his ex (yes he would go to prison for that beach!) slowly fell for Eun Gi. He didn’t care about living for himself until Eun Gi came. He loved his ex so much that he would die for her, but he loved Eun Gi more that he would want to live for her and spend all the time in the world with her 😭😭😭 It totally sounds makjang but I don’t care, love this couple to bits!

This was my first Song Joong Ki drama. He and Moon Chae Won are one of my favourite couples. They match so well. I miss watching them together.

Thanks for your article, @missvictrix. TIME was an intense drama with a protagonist facing a personal expiration date. Kim Jung-hyun's performance was indeed memorable.

ABOUT TIME's heroine was up against a deadline, but it wasn't necessarily caused by terminal illness. If anything, her problem was hyperawareness of individuals' appointed lifespans, including her own. Her impending demise at a young age prompted her to pursue her theatrical dream. If the story ended there, it would have been better.

JUST BETWEEN LOVERS entailed a terminal illness, as if PTSD from being trapped with a corpse for days in a collapsed building were not bad enough.

ROOM NO. 9 featured a falsely-imprisoned convict with a terminal illness attempting to clear her own name while her elderly mother, who fought ceaselessly to prove her daughter's innocence, grows increasingly feeble.

One could also make a case for a variation on the protagonist's terminal illness trope: impending death or dementia of a someone who was wronged and whose name has to be cleared while they are still cognizant. LOOKOUT's Prosecutor Jang Do-han was racing against the clock to clear his framed father's name as he descended into dementia. I haven't seen REMEMBER, but recall reading that the protagonist became a lawyer to prove his father's innocence, only to develop Alzheimer's disease himself. MEMORY, which I haven't seen either, also has Alzheimer's in store for the protagonist.

Two more shows, from 2018, also come to mind:

SHOULD WE KISS FIRST's male lead discovers that his medical condition has deteriorated, which prompts him to make amends to a woman whose life was turned upside down by an unfortunate incident that involved his work as an advertising copywriter. The angst quotient goes through the roof when he plans to avail himself of the assisted suicide services of the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland, but he ultimately changes his mind.

Weekend family drama MARRY ME NOW had a case of apparent familial dementia that provided an opening for a son's collusion in his father's attempted fraud perpetrated against his ex-wife, a wealthy businesswoman. (It also had some of the most horrendous Chaebol In-Laws From Hell and one of the most inventive stratagems for a birth secret I've encountered in a Kdrama to date.)

What comes to my mind is real life brain trauma for a Korean actor who then suddenly just disappears. It's been almost a year since the beautiful and moody actor Park Min Woo's life was shattered after a motorcycle accident. It took nearly a month in ICU and brain surgery for his agency to finally say he would survive. Then he is never heard from (or about) again. Being in the military at the time, there was no word of his release. He just disappeared. Even if he suffered permanent severe traumatic brain injury, wouldn't there still be fans wanting to support him and let him know they still care about him? Wouldn't it be easier for him to deal with recovery if he knew there were still people who cared? Just hiding him away seems a cruel thing to do to an actor who has spent time in the limelight. I hope like crazy that he was able to recover and will return to a productive life. But if that's not the case, then I hope he knows that people do still care about him and hewon't be so easily forgotten.

I find it super fitting that Choi Jin-hyuk is the cover photo for this article. WHY IS THAT MAN ALWAYS DYING?

In the last Empress, a doctor reveals to Min Yu Ra: «this man is taking pills for gun shot wounds». I am here to confirm there is no such thing a specific medication for gun shot wounds. Ok back to real talk,

I've never ever felt the sense of urgency whenever characters are in life or death situations with «6 months or weeks left to live». Maybe because I know the whole drama will be during those months or weeks and when they die, I won't have to watch the repercussions after their death....

The first Kdrama I watched with this type of story line was Goodbye My Love, which led me to Forever Yours. For some reason some actors play these sorts of roles over and over. Frankly I much preferred Kim Hee Sun in Faith as opposed to the earlier two. At any rate after over 100 Kdramas, I've learned to expect the worst when a character gets the "dreaded nosebleed." Soon I started to wonder why ROKdrama was so hooked on these sad story lines and began to wonder if it was attached to their high suicide rate? I have a Korean friend that is so depressed, and bent on staying that way, that he can't enjoy even the smallest things in life. I truly believe that Kdramas could give their watchers more uplifting stories to help them see that there is happiness in life and if they look they'll find it.

Kim Woo Bin in Uncontrollably Fond made me sob (that scene with his mom at the end). It definitely had it's problems, but I appreciated that it didn't resort to some miracle cure (which an American drama would've pulled out) and let the protagonist have an ending not matter how much it hurt my heart.

Jang Hyuk played a boxer with punch-drunk syndrome in the drama special OLD GOODBYE, with Jang Nara portraying his ex-wife. She had divorced him several years earlier because of her own health issues that she did not want to burden him with. The show was reminiscent of the O. Henry short story "The Gift of the Magi," but had a fantasy twist.

Why, everybody's fave MLSHR episode (12 i think) had its blow softened by making Court lady Oh terminally sick with cancer!