Reply 1997 (norebang scene)
Reply 1988 - (non) mock confession

Since we are going for recent, Captivating the ing takes the price for confession scene. Episode 8 ending specifically.
Jo Jung-seok pulled his weight as Lee In dealt with the reveal that his baduk player is actually the woman he fell for years ago. It was so believable.

Since I'm currently watching It Is Always Midnight in Hagwon, I'm not going to reference the confession but Hye-jin confessing her feelings to her best friend. All this while, I thought she was unshaken by Jun-ho's romantic moves. But this vulnerability she eased into here is something else.

The confession that had me pulling my hair out? Marry My Husband. Who confesses love, proceeds to a kiss, and cuts the kiss mid-tempo with this speech I don't even care to understand. ML was really dumb here. "This is not how you temper your butterflies, sir ML", jerrykuvira says.

Eagle Brothers first direct confession from ML to FL.
(ML has been so good and nice to FL and FL is finally starting to ask what's up with the niceness, with the latest being a food basket).
ML: You do the receiving of the gifts and thoughts. I'll do the sending.
FL: (...)
We'll know her response to that this week.

Brain Works 🤩 Twice. Once when Kwak Sun Young confesses to Cha Tae Hyun, and oncd when he confesses to her. Not to mention the hilariously effective love counselor role Jung Young Hwa played in between as a man who knew nothing about matters of heart except those that related directly to brain and science!

The confession that swept me off my feet recently: in episode 13 (I think) of When Life gives you Tangerines, Park Chun-seob runs after the bus which Yang Geum-Myeong has entered after her cinema visit. He finally catches the bus and watches over her, as she sleeps until they reach the last bus stop. When he enters the bus it is packed, and he slowly inches towards her during the ride, providing her head with his soft scarf against the window to comfort her in her sleep. She awakes, sees him, now in the row before her seat in the now almost empty bus, takes a moment and then asks if this is a dream.
The bus ride until now is so wonderfully filmed with them both slightly illuminated and her voice-over detailing what it took for them to meet here and now, and what follows is one of the sweetest and most heartfelt confession scenes I have ever watched. And I have watched it a lot of times! Partly because I couldn't believe this is the same guy who painted the cinema paintings before, but mainly because this is just so wonderfully and lovingly acted, especially by Kim Seon-ho. He oozes his love for her out of every pore, and puts everything out in the open for her so that he won't waste this chance that just fell into his lap but is still so careful - he reluctantly asks her if she was alone at the cinema, and when she says she was, he is sooo relieved. I was so touched by these scenes that I still wasn't able to get them out of my head!
I've watched a lot of kdramas by now and have seen lots of confession scenes, but since I saw this I can't seem to remember the others...it will be hard to top this one!

Let’s Eat (2013) Shim Hyung Tak confesses to Lee Soo Kyung , after the fact, he knows that she likes someone else , Yoon Doo Joon , a model for 2L’s everywhere.

It’s been so long since I’ve watched it , I’ll have to rewatch it.

Lee Soo Kyung, Unnie , please make dramas again, she had been gone for 5 years or so.

_ The girl who sees smells. I probably mentioned this confession in the other discussion, but it still is one of my favorite ones because it was so pretty. The ML wrote his confession in the air spritzing perfume, and the FL saw it like hundreds of flowers and colored shapes. Awesome!

_ Twinkling Watermelon: Yi Chang to Cheong Ha. Singing in sign language.

_ My Dearest: "My body is yours, my soul is yours, my heart is yours too".

There are other confessions I really liked even though I can't remember the exact words: Grand Prince, 25-21, Fated to love you, Flower Boy Next Door...

Tangerines: Gwan-sik in the daisy field with Ae-sun's hand tucked in his sports windbreaker. The entire lead-up to the confession and kiss was GOLD.

Actually, every act of service that he has ever done for her is a love confession: from selling every single damn cabbage for her for years, to feeding her fish for a decade, to jumping ship and swimming back to shore for her etc

Having just finished episode 27 of Eagle Brothers, I absolutely loved Chairman Han's confession to Gwangsuk - a confession of a middle aged widower to a fellow widow, with no rose-tinted glasses on, with the message: I know you well, warts and all, and I love you exactly because you are who you are. (With that kind loving twinkling look Ahn Jaewook can do so well. 😍)

Well done confession scenes are life. Aren't confessions where everything begins? Dating, marriage, kids... Confessions=Life I can't remember a specific one but does the forest scene in Marry My Husband count where ML shows FL the mark on his body? Ajumma is so bad at these prompts but the confession I will always remember is the one that happened to me back in the old days when girls and boys wrote letters. Do young people these days still do that? I was leaving and the boy came to send me off at the airport. He handed me a letter on the escalator. I waved the letter in the air excitedly. He looked down in embarassment. I turn around and see his mom looking at us. We were teenagers and his mom had given him a ride to the airport. I don't think anyone has quite a confession like this, witnessed by a boy's mother! Even at middle age, this memory never fails to put a smile on my face.

Hospital Playlist
Ik-jun's confession to Song-hwa was the best kind of awkward, crossing a line from friends to something "more" is can be awkward and scary, the actors nailed it.

Secretary Kim
Young-Joons childish confessions were perfectly true to character and the immediate marriage propsal ("I'm smart,wealthy and competent...") after they agreed to start dating too

I first came on this discussion board because of You Are My Spring, which has a totally miscommunicated confession scene.
The ML sits and shows a lot of emotion as he tells the FL that he likes her but he wants to be friends because he's worried about his chronic health condition. (Then, in the next episode, she writes in to his radio show to ask what she's supposed to take away from the confession!) Kim Dong-wook was so committed to that scene. I really believed in the confession scene that he loved her and was willing to sacrifice for her. When Seo Hyun-jin got up and embraced him, I thought, "Oh, this is method acting." The hug felt so natural and inevitable. This was a show where their chemistry was amazing, right up until they actually got together and had to kiss and stuff. Now I look back on the show, it's not the masterpiece I thought at the time, but... that scene, and a couple of the scenes--they just acted their hearts out and drew me in!

Of course, COFFEE PRINCE: "Only once, I'm going to say so listen. I like you. I don't care if you are a man or an alien. It's too hard to get over you, so let's go as far as we can go. Let's go." But I also like after the big reveal and the emotional betrayal and heartbreak, how after processing everything, they reconcile with the chestnut trail and acknowledgement that they would rather forgive after seeing things from the other's perspective than live without one another. The working through issues after the confession and becoming a couple is really well done (and rare in dramas).
INTEREST OF LOVE: The hockey ring scene was really effective and memorable.
LOVELY RUNNER: The confession that she loved him and had missed him after he dropped her off at her apartment (and then he ran up the stairs) was beautiful.

Thought it’s not technically a confession, I thought the family proposal scene in When I Was the Most Beautiful was one of the most unique and touching proposals I’ve ever seen, especially since Seo Jin knew how much Ye Ji yearned for the security of a family. it was probably the least selfish gesture he made for her in their whole relationship.

The confessions I'll never forget and made me cry were in Happiness as unlikely as that is.

My Unfamiliar Family> She was so direct and fast!

A Piece of Your Mind> Seo-Woo does't confess her feelings but she's discussing with Ji-Soo's voice who doesn't know Ha-Won is in the room and Ji-Soo talked about Seo-Woo's feelings for him :p

Award for Best Confession-Laundering: When the Phone Rings (Ep 4)
WTPR elevates this particular brand of (direct/indirect) love confession to an art

(a) The extra ad-lib interview test thrown in last minute, where our FL who is interviewing for a sign interpreter signs an extremely intimate love confession by her husband (our ML) and the Speaker of the Blue House - of course, all under the pretext of a job interview.

Possibly the most elaborate mating ritual outside of the animal kingdom right under everyone's noses, this one. 🤣

(b) also in Ep 4: another confession laundering where FL phones in as the kidnapper to hubby (ML) on a voice-modulated phone which allows her to really air her marital grievances under the safety of anonymity.

This leads to one of the most swoon-worthy confession and defence treatise delivered by phone: "Hee-joo isn’t supplemental pages, she’s a whole new language. Also, she’s stronger and smarter than anyone thinks, so don’t talk about my wife like that."

(best part of this laundering set-up? He makes his love confession straight to his wife, while thinking he's giving the kidnapper a smackdown) Be still, my heart.

On a purely quantitative and qualitative level, I don’t think there’s any kdrama that can outconfession any other kdrama than I Am Not A Robot. I mean…

We have a Coffee house scene where ML was playing a five-finger game confessing his love and our ML putting her head on the table next to his confessing she’s not a robot. We have a phenomenally tears-inducing Reset scene, where ML lead was confessing so many things before “resetting” robot. We have Barn scene. We have Betrayal confession scene oozing so much with pain and hurtful words. We have the Meteor Shower Under The Tree confession scene… and I’m sure I’m forgetting a lot more. So many confessions, in words, small details (heart lamps, umbrellas, etc) and unspoken conflicting emotions. So much love.

I really, really hope to see Yoo Seung-ho in another romantic drama. That gorgeous sexy man disappeared as of late somehow. A pity.

Award for Cringe Confession with Most 2nd-Hand Embarrassment:
Pilot of "My Dearest Nemesis" (sorry I can only recall the most recent ones)

Good news is it's totally intentional and played for horror-comedy. After all, this particular love confession was so traumatic, it allegedly caused our OTP to be -- separately and jointly -- celibate singles for a decade.

Cat-fishing ✔
By a minor(!!) ✔
cringe-worthy rocker fashion ✔
PUBLIC confession on the street ✔
Cheesy pitch: "You are my destiny!" ✔
All the ingredients for a disastrous confession? ✔

Award for Best Defender Confession (where the word "love" never once appears in their spiel):

This one is a tie for me: (a) Ji-an in My Ahjussi (b) Yi-seo in Itaewon Class

When fierce gals love fiercely, they are more protective a shield than your Bitdefender, Norton and McAfee combined. It also helps that Ji-an is a petty criminal, and Yi-seo is a certified sociopath 🤣

When FLs with an impaired / limited range of love language expression and moral compass LOVE, they do it in the only way they knew.

Winning Confession Line: "I will kill anyone who messes with him."

Yep, you heard me right.
*Both* of them made almost the same confession, word for word (and never to the man they love, always to the enemies baying for the ML's blood)

I really enjoy the confession in Sh**ting Stars because of her reaction to it. The ML finally manages to tell her he likes her and she screams and runs away 😂😂😂

I thought about this for a while.

Best confession goes to

Something in the Rain

While at a work outing, the FL makes a bold move and grabs the ML hand under the table while calmly drinking a beer.
Utter shock and awe 🫢😱 ❤️.
No words were exchanged. Just spontaneous hand holding.

Award for "Most High-Risk Confession" & "Most Unusual Love Token" given for the confession:

Hands down (and feet down), this one goes to our Stats Geek ML in The Witch.

Our man spends 8 of 10 episodes risking life and limb to test every single hypothesis of the Laws of Death governing any romantic interaction with the titular witch (FL).

And in return, we get rewarded with one of drama-land's most unusual token(s) of love: (a) a thumb drive; (b) a statistics research paper painstakingly put together about the laws of death

Some of my favorites have already been mentioned! Something in the Rain, Piece of Your Mind, Shooting Stars.

I love Be Melodramatic -- that whole episode where they confess to each other in a million ways and keep pretending they're just workshopping their drama.

Hard to beat, "Worship me."

Tango scene in Scent of a Woman. wow. Not a typical confession, but he gets the idea across for sure! The earlier scene in class where he backs her up against the mirror was also kind of obvious, but he didn't get out any words so I don't think it counts.