Precisely at this moment literally cannot think of anything else but The Red Sleeve. It really has been a while since a drama break my heart THAT bad

Mother.

No explanation needed.

Thinking about my most favorite scenes in Reply 1988 always pool up tears in my eyes. Does scenes that made you shed tears count as favourites? Because I don't know how to explain how I feel with that drama.

One scene that will always stay in my head rent free will be when Bora's mum defended her over some policemen. The way she stood in front of her daughter, fiercely defending her reminds me of my mom and how countless number of times she has always and will always be there for me. No drama has made me feel the way I felt when watching Reply 1988. The drama was the reason why I fell really deep into the rabbit hole of k-dramas.

MR SUNSHINE for me. A re-watch is out of the question. The drama is so well made and the deaths of the main characters incredibly moving, from Kim Min-jung dying on Yoo Yeon-sook's back, he himself watching his lifeless body dragged along the ground, Byun Yo-han being tortured to death and Lee Byung-hun on the uncoupled train looking back before being shot.
It must be one of the drama's with the highest death toll.

Reply 1988 was my first kdrama, and ranks up there as one of my favorites. My son (adopted from Korea) had been studying there, and came home and said "Mom, you need to watch this drama." My husband and I began the series shortly afterwards. I didn't know that would become the beginning of my viewing addiction.
Kdramas seemed so foreign to US dramas, but the feelings! How we could become so invested in those families. It was the family love and care that stood out to me, and brings back the best memories.

Does it show my age if I say Stairway to Heaven? It was one of the first few k dramas I watched. All I remember is crying buckets and buckets of tears. If I don’t recall wrongly, even the ending was tragic.

I didn't consider this drama to be that heart breaking, but months ago, i rewatch Solomon's Perjury and the ending scene made me cry so much. My heart hurt. I couldn't stop thinking about the rooftop scene, the imaginary conversation, for days.
Even now that i'm talking about this.

It was a simple drama, but it touched my heart

There are lots of scenes from various K-dramas that have wrecked my heart (e.g. when Ji-an uninstalls the bugging app on her phone in My Ahjusshi), but the one drama that didn’t release its grip on my tear ducts from start to finish was Assembly from 2015. That was mostly because of the speeches of its lead character, a labour organiser turned newbie assemblyman called Jin Sang-pil. I cried when Sang-pil demanded an apology from the judge in ep1. I cried when he asked why the economy was always being revived at the expense of ordinary people. I cried when he insisted on keeping his word even when threatened with expulsion from his party. And his one-man 23-hour filibuster always reduces me to floods of tears, no matter how many times I watch it. Of course it helps that Sang-pil is played by my favourite Korean actor Jung Jae-young, but tbh his delivery of the speeches can be pretty shouty sometimes. So it’s really the writer, Jung Hyun-min (better known for sageuk like Nokdu Flower and Jeong Do-jeon) whom I’ve got to thank for the leaky faucet effect.

Agree with the previously referenced titles. Also

Yi San - as sad as RSC is, the chest stomping occurs after spending 15 hours with the OTP -- not 70 or so, where it almost feels like saying goodbye to a friend.

Queen for Seven Days -- if they could distill the essence of this show into a bottled fragrance, it would have to be called Heartbreak.

I think usually it's more movies that impact me. Dramas are longer and there are up and down that made the story bearable.

Stories about abused children are the hardest ones and Mother striked a cord, like Silenced for the Korean movies or Hotaru no haka (Grave of the Fireflies) for Japanese animated movies.

Others dramas that touched me by their ambiance/impression are
- The Snow Queen : the story with the tale, the winter, the terminal illness...
- Valid Love : I really hoped for another ending. Not that I necessarly wanted her to end up with Lee Soo-Hyuk's character (he was super hot in this role) but I wanted her to find freedom.
- The Third Charm : This drama started as a cute first love story and showed the life is way more complicated and not like we imagined. Esom was really great in the last part.

Otherwise, the last scene of My Country...

I tend to avoid dramas that I suspect will break my heart: that leaves out all hospice/hospital related dramas, and things where somebody's mothers/children die because those are mainly the stuff my nightmares are made of. Admittedly it's hard to avoid these in Dramaland, and sometimes they just show up without warning. The Third Charm had the audacity to pull a crap-combo on me: they got a character battling cancer, and they even got the child dying across the world, in my birth town😱 Instead of wrecking my heart in a good way, it triggered me, and I still can't forgive drama for that, even if I still adore Seo Kangjoon 😭
Queen for 7 days broke my heart in a good way. Chicago Typewriter and more recently Nokdu Flower also made me ugly cry

Instead of the usual suspects like Reply 1988, I'll mention one show which I did not expect to wreck me as much as it did - Chicago Typewriter.

Starting with the scene in Ep. 9 where they visit Gwanghwamun, I was basically an emotional mess. It made me think about how much was sacrificed by the youth of so many colonised nations so we could live in today's free world.

And then the ending just broke my heart. I was pretty much bawling for most of the last two episodes. The heart-breaking and brave choices the leads had to make still sadden me to this day.

Among k dramas, it would be BECAUSE THIS IS MY FIRST LIFE. I was so invested in that drama that I made an account on db just to comment on the recaps even though I was a lurker for quite some time. I loved every bit of it till episode 14. After that ji ho's decision broke my heart and her and sehee's reunion in the last episode wasn't enough for the anguish I felt in the last 2 eps. I know most, if not all beanies love this drama to bits and will probably not agree with me, but those 2 episodes ruined the drama for me and I can't go and enjoy the earlier episodes because of the (in my opinion) irrational behavior of jiho.
Among non kdramas it would definitely Be HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER. Admittedly I didn't follow the series from the beginning and only caught up to it in season 6 or 7. But that doesn't mean that my frustration was any less than the people who started watching it from beginning. I felt robbed of 3 years of my life after the series finale. I couldn't imagine that one, JUST ONE episode could ruin the entire series for me but it did here. Even though I know there's an alternative ending, the fact that the creators did it just to placate the fans and that their minds were made up from the beginning made me decide not to watch it because it was just damage control from all the backlash.

there are many dramas that Wrecked My Heart.. left me Bawling with having my heart checked between my fingers and almost gasping for life....
*and thats not exaggeration cause the heartbreak i get from my kdramas is either this deep or not at all*
1. Scarlet Heart's ending scene
IU looking at that painting and we get to see LJK on other side of universe (i can't recall exact scene) as i couldn't muster up my courage to rewatch thay scene ever again in my life.
I cried so so bad aftet it ended and spent good 2 months to come out of that trauma.

2. R1988
epi 18 end... RJY made such a beautiful confession only to take it back and turn it into a prank.... i cried with him (may be more than him)... i never wanted to watch next 2 episodes but finsihed just for formality and R1988 for me has just 18 episodes and with my alternate ending.. Hyeri n JRY together in real life... done.

3. My Ahjussi
this whole drama was heart wrenching.. each n every scene of IU with thise gloomy eyes it was enough painful for me that i kept last 2 episodes on hold for good 4 months and only after i had handled pain of 14 episodes i restarted last 2 episodes.. that too with tissues, tears and heartache by my side.
I can never forget this one show for being soo soo sad but same time allowed me to unload my own suffering thru tears i had while watching it... after every episode i used to feel light.. light after putting down a some of the emotional baggage i dint even know i was carrying all this while.

4. INAR
epi 13... YSHs confrontation scene with CSB... it was damn painful scene to witness. How much Poor YSH had to go thru to become so closed hearted but then how much AJI3 helped him to learn to open only to be get hurt again... it was sorted out all well but it was sooo heart breaking scene.

Black: Everything in this show was so damn sad, but: the dog, gaesae, gaesae's girlfriend, 444 backstory (finale)... You can ask my mom, this show destryed me completely.
School 2013/Angry Mom: school dramas always break me that's way I'm not watching them at the moment. LET THE KIDS BE KIDS, AVEMARIAOME.

Be Melodramatic/Live/My Ahjussi/Love Affairs in the Afternoon: These shows were sad in such a real/relatable way.

There's also subplots that broke me like Jung Pal's loveline broke you:
Hello Monster: Min... He just wanted his hyung to find him...
Misaeng: When Suk Yool stopped smiling...
Prison Playbook: Lee Kyoo Hyung's character... He just wanted love.

Ps. But Jung Pal got the girl... lol sorry, I'm out.

Secret Love broke me. The things that poor woman has to go through. Everyone just wants a never-ending piece of her.

Just Between Lovers and Reply 1988 are the two for me. I tend to connect more with dramas about working class people, and I haven’t found others that are done as realistically.

I have been watching dramas for around 14 years now & there have been a few that have wrecked my heart into pieces. But it's not a common occurrence, especially in recent years.
However, one that still is extremely vivid in my heart and memory is ''The red sleeve''.
I don't watch a lot of sageuks, because usually the palace drama & all the murders & political plots just do not fit my taste. But, boy oh boy, has ''The red sleeve'' become one of my ultimate favorite dramas of all time. While at the same time completely smashing my heart into thousand pieces. Whenever I think about it, tears still well up in my eyes.
There are many factors that went into it - the story, the acting, the cinematography, even all the little things. But what I think had the most impact is the real story behind it all. I also found and read a blog post with the translated historical texts about the couple & it wrecked me even more.
I could go on probably in pages & pages about this drama, but in short, it was just so beautifully painfully bittersweet. I am currently debating whether to rewatch it now or do it later when perhaps the strong feeling will have subsided. But I have a hunch that those strong feelings might never subdue & I perhaps just need another trip to that beautiful yet sad story that in the end made me ugly cry so much my face puffed up like a pastry.

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (2014) (Viki US) . P&P was my 12th kdrama and I watched in 2016. It made me a fan of a ton of actors including a young (19) Lee Tae-hwan. There is a devastatingly heartbreaking scene late in the drama between LTH and actress Kim Na-soon who plays a mom. W is the only other LTH drama I have seen but I still have a soft spot for the guy based on that drama and one scene.

I don't watch melos or shows that will end unhappily unless I'm in the mood to do so or I'm unaware it will take that direction. I think shows like JBL and My Ajusshi don't count because even if they'll make me cry terribly, at the end they'll heal too. Dramas like Chicago Typewriter and Seven The Queen fit this category. They left me sad and wounded without providing a bandage. But I guess they are still not at the level of any Noh Hee Kyung show.
She's a writer who knows how to stir the emotions in your heart and wreck it. I haven't still been able to complete any of her shows because they're so realistically well done and painful. With the exception of The Most Beautiful Goodbye (remake). If you just want to cry for full 4 episodes, this is the show. In fact, I only watched this show knowing that it's a 4 episode NHK drama so I can probably complete it. So heart wrenching, I was a mess watching it. But not for one moment did i regret watching it. Till date I remember clearly how every aspect of this mini drama was beautifully painful.

Everyone who was on DB in 2018 probably already knows my answer to this but I'll say it anyway: A Poem A Day. I could see the chemistry between Minho and Boyoung instantly. He was so much more fun and interesting than the boring old Dr. Ye. I was rooting for Minho to mature and for Boyoung to get over her silly crush on Dr. Ye and realize that Minho was the one for her. But, alas, the writer caved to public opinion and SWITCHED ships mid-show so Boyoung ended up with Dr. Ye. I, Captain of the Minhoyoung, willing to do whatever I could to salvage my ship rallied the crew of my ship and started a Minhoyoung fanfic to help soothe our broken hearts.

I'm so glad I watched APAD. The experience was truly unforgettable. The fun shipping "wars", the poetry slams, and the island parties on the fanwall truly heightened the experience. However, I will absolutely never watch it again. I can't watch my poor Minho be thrown under the bus (or motorcycle) again.

when Gongmin and Choi Young had a quorrel in Faith, I lost it. but even more when they overcame such moments.
Recently, in Happiness, Ji Hyun cowering under the blanket in despari and Sae Bom being all beauty and beast
and in Bossam just the general vibe of surrendering and carrying ones´ fate in grace, it felt very taoistic

I usually try to avoid heart wrenching dramas... but I think the first one was the ending of What Happened in Bali. And the last one episode 8 of Reset.

Ooohhh interesting topic! Gonna name some of the more recent dramas I've watched. First up is Flower of Evil. Lee Joon Gi was fantastic in it and had me tearing up several times. Excellent, emotional thriller.

My Country definitely wrecked me too. Hwi & Seon Ho TT__TT The pain was worth it though to see Yang Se Jong and Woo Do Hwan acting together.

For an sageuk, I would pick Queen for Seven Days.
Loved it, but had me bawling.

Side note: I just love Korean ballads, but especially the deep, heartwrenching ones we get from these kinds of dramas. XD

As everyone knows who has been here in the past 5 years, Goblin wrecked me. It was an emotional roller coaster for me. All those after death vignettes were heart-rending. But in the same episode, I’d be laughing so hard, I was crying. It was my first introduction to Gong Yoo. That’s enough to wreck anyone.