In She was Pretty, I believe there was old photo of theirs together. Or some box. Isn’t this what she finds and they know they had a childhood connection?

Just because I can’t resist it, I’m going to choose Park Sae-ro-yi’s father’s watch in Itaewon Class. The timepiece sits on Sae-ro-yi’s wrist for almost all of the drama, reminding him of where he’s come from, what he’s lost, and why he’s fighting. It also signifies the importance of playing the long-game.

One of my favorite examples of this is the moon rabbit keychain charm from Thirty But Seventeen ❤️ The charm connects the leads' past, and is a symbol of their reconnection in the present. At the end of the drama, the ML gifts the FL with a copy of the charm (she had given him the original), so they both have one, symbolizing their love. I think it's a really sweet use of a special object.

Jewel in the Palace
Jang Geum finds her mother's hidden cookbook. Ep 10

Alchemy of Souls - the bird-shaped whistle that Seo Yul gave to Naksu

Bridal Mask - the small knife Kang To gave to Mok Dan

When the Weather is Fine - the keychain Hye-Won gave Eun-sob when they were students, on which Eun-seob later inscribes "Irene", his nickname for Hye-won.

The Hong Sisters are the masters of this concept. Just to name a few:
ALCHEMY OF SOULS, the yin & yang jades
YOU’RE BEAUTIFUL, the Pig-Rabbit

The photo in Healer.
The portrait of the sister/queen in Goblin.
The paintings by Lee Sol in Her Private Life.
The talisman in Queen In-hyun's Man.
The journal Lee Min Ho's character keeps so he doesn't forget the FL in Legend of the Blue Sea.

The Letters in StartUp though ended up on the wrong person 😅.

Are birthmarks a thing ? Important in establishing eligibility for the throne ! 😂

Mi Joo's red shoes in Giant.

TALE OF THE NINE TAILED:

Yeon’s red umbrella sword
(small rant but I hated his romance with Ji-A, they had no chemistry and Yeon should’ve been asexual imo)

Yeon’s love of mint ice-cream (I personally loathe mint ice-cream, it’s basically like eating toothpaste)

I know I’m stretching it, but Rang’s pet dog being reincarnated into a human child was all sorts of adorable

TALE OF THE NINE TAILED 1938:

Rang in a three piece suit, yes yes it’s definitely relevant to the plot!

Rang’s axes

Rang himself

And to the boring stuff:
The ruler that brings the dead back to life
The crystal that maintains the boundary between the living and the dead

Some light spoilers here, sorry.

In Delivery Man, FL (ghost) has a hair tie on her wrist that belonged to ML's mom, which is how he establishes a connection between them at the beginning. I wanna say this is episode 2?

In Goblin, FL is given a necklace by ML which he sees in a vision of the future (and therefore knows he's supposed to give it to her). Later she forgets the significance of it, but it's one of the things that guides her back to the truth.

Crash Course In Romance had an orange pen that belonged to a student who killed herself back in the day, and that ML gives to her younger brother at her funeral. Later used to ID him as the serial killer *sigh*.

It's Okay to not be Okay has a butterfly brooch that is worn by the person who killed the brothers' mom and is the reason Sang-tae is so terrified of butterflies.

Never Give Up has a cell phone that once belonged to the younger ML's mom that a loan shark with a heart of gold has in her stash and is trying to return to him. Older ML is able to ID him from pictures on it.

Ok, I'm stopping. This was a fun one to think about and I'm sure there are loads more!

This one is a form of allusion to childhood connection. It was well done in You Are My Spring.

By this time, romance has been cemented and the noble idiocy a la compulsory breakup has come and gone. The ML handed the FL one of the many candies he's handed her. In this particular scene, the FL in turn plants the candy in the ground and surrounds it with stones which she shaped circular or heart, I can't recall at the moment. The ML sees this act and immediately recalls his first love from the orphanage. So far the FL has been jealous of the woman who happens to be the ML's first love, and the ML himself doesn't do anything to soothe her jealousy, he rubs it in more instead, lovingly of course. Turns out she has been jealous of herself and he has given his heart to first love all over again.

Significant Object : A Candy, planted in the ground and surrounded by stones.

Most recent : Hae-joon's wristwatch in My Perfect Stranger.

Glass Mask : The female lead has a signature tailoring method called cross-stitching or double stitching. Her sister, who is wicked by the way, knew she was back immediately she saw the design.

The book (poetry anthology) and the note inside it, given to Se-hee by Jung-min, his ex-girlfriend, in Because this life is our first.

“Crash Landing into You”: The old camera/photos and Captain Ri’s piano composition establish the Switzerland connection between him and Se-ri. And his brother’s long-missing watch contains important evidence related to his death.

“Master’s Sun”: The sun pendant comes to represent Joong-won’s memories of Gong-shil.

“Shopaholic Louis”: The music box establishes the childhood connection between Louis and Bok-shil.

In empress Ki, Fl's mother gives her a ring to find her mother.
Actually, I know a lot of them but it slips my mibd the moment I real the quiz

Jang Bo-ri Is Here has a few (long show). Jang Bo-ri remembers a hidden cache from her childhood, the exiled designer/daughter-in-law indicates her return with a hanbok, and Lee Yu-ri is really attached to her wedding ring.

The universal k-drama object is the green soju bottle.
It has the power to make strong men weak and weak women strong.

The green and red circus-print handkerchief in 19th Life. Young Ji-eum uses it to bandage teenage Seo-ha’s hand at the playground and he keeps it and shows it to her in the present (both in her current 19th life). It’s from the Dongbaek Circus with which Ji-eum performed in her 17th life when she was a man, Ae-gyeong’s uncle, and young Ae-gyeong carried a stack of them away after her uncle died. She must have held on to one and given it to young Ji-eum. So that object has persisted through 3 lifetimes and connects characters in both past and present lives.

A couple in Circle - a pink plastic flower and a wooden cross, both with secrets inside.

The cell-phone charm the FL made for the dead boy in Just Between Lovers.

The watch and typewriter in Chicago typewriter

In Signal, Soo-Hyun recognizes Jae-Han’s walkie-talkie by the smiley-face sticker she’d stuck to the bottom years ago, when she was a rookie officer.

In Cinderella and the Four Knights, a pair of matching rings seem to suggest an inadvertent incestuous relationship between the lead couple. But being a kdrama romcom, there is a different explanation absolving the couple of any hint of sin—an explanation involving a forbidden marriage, a fatal fire, and a bunch of unbelievable coincidences.

Here’s another book…the one in Once Upon a Small Town that (child) Han Ji-yool gave to (child) Ja-young when he left town to go on to bigger and better things in the big city. He’d signed it, “I’m Han Ji-Yool. I’ll be back. Let’s be secret friends again!”

Even though he forgets that he did this, and he forgets her…eventually, he does this very thing 🥰

Another cute thing about this, though, is that there’s a plot arc in which our OTP gives conflicting love advice to two young ‘uns about what to do when one of them forgets about a gift the other one gave (which is what had happened to this original book, of course :)). Adorable hilarity ensues.

May I add Bang Woon 's fan in "My country the new age" ? ... Many loved that fan. It was even mentioned in a blog post for the most important objects of the year

And of course the flute in "Eternal Monarch", which had a whole story around it

There was also this head accessory in "You are beautiful" that the male lead gave to the female lead and she tried to stick it after breaking it and created a hassle. She wore it then to signify their relationship

The light in your eyes : the watch that the female lead believed would take her to the past so she can see her husband again

Can anyone remember the item that was significant in the film 20th Century girl was it a video from her dad’s store? That she found again I think it was when packing up the store when it closed down.

Fun topic!

Umbrellas in Do You Like Brahms and She Was Pretty

Handkerchiefs in Do You Like Brahms and Secret Love Affair

Dice game in King's Affection

Chestnuts in Coffee Prince - love the scene where he follows them like breadcrumbs

Woori cat and her name tag in Because This Life is Our First

Bo Ra's necklace from Sun Woo, Deok Sun's pink gloves and her choice of Taeki's in Answer Me 1988

Red scarf, buckwheat flowers, and maple leaf in Goblin

Every small box of trinkets and memorabilia. The list...too endless to mention.
Whatever is in the box, it's always like a deja vu of Gollum looking at the ring.

In The Greatest Love, there's an entire extended metaphor that's based on a potato plant the male lead ends up growing. It was beautiful and taught me that Gamja means "potato". That was a good moment.

Also there's a cute book of cute things in W 2 Worlds and I totally bought it hahaha

The lockets that both that Shi Yeon (Kim Tae-Hee) and the ML Kang Min Hoo (Jo Hyun-Jae) wore. They had it as children when both wore the lockets with the photo of the other in it. Hence Shi Yeon being a Gumiho was about to deal the death blow on Kang Min Hoo stopped when she saw the locket. An old 2004 drama which was one of the very few oldies I love.

In My Secret Romance the leads had a drunken one night stand at the beach in a car after which the FL ran away. ML was flustered to find her gone leaving behind her bra pad. He kept it in a box for several years before she accidentally came across the box and was mortified to know he kept it after so may years. That was one of Sung Hoon's comedic drama and deserved re-watching time and again.

There are so many in dramaland that I don't even really notice them any more. But one I thought very impactful recently was in a movie not a drama. A ham radio device in 2022 movie Ditto.