Em 🐝 / #DoctorX 👩🏻‍⚕️🩺💉

[Art and Today] ‘Doctor X’ and the Socially Conscious Medical Drama | Kim Sun-young, Popular Culture Critic The 2007 MBC drama White Tower is regarded as a work that changed the history of Korean medical dramas. This is because it significantly expanded the themes of medical dramas, which, ever since MBC's General Hospital (1994)—considered the genre's pioneer - had primarily focused on the sense of duty and humanism among medical professionals. Going beyond stories within hospital walls, White Tower took a scalpel to the harsh realities and injustices within the medical field, heralding the birth of Korea's socially conscious medical drama. A line from the second episode encapsulates the nature of this work. It is spoken by Oh Kyung Hwan (Byun Hee Bong), a professor of basic medicine at Myungin University Hospital, to Choi Do Young (Lee Sun Kyun), a young doctor trying to correct longstanding malpractice and institutional conventions: "A small doctor treats diseases, a middle doctor treats people, and a great doctor treats the nation." Applying this maxim to medical dramas, White Tower, which targets the illness of our society, can be considered a work that aspires to be a "great doctor." Following White Tower, the tradition of socially conscious medical dramas aspiring to become "great doctors" has continued steadily. Notable examples include MBC's Golden Time (2012), which highlighted the fundamental contradictions in the medical welfare system through its focus on emergency medicine; KBS's Good Doctor (2013), set in a pediatric surgery department and addressing issues such as discrimination against people with disabilities and children, as well as for-profit hospitals; and SBS's Dr. Romantic (2016–2023) series, which actively incorporated contemporary medical issues, including controversies surrounding political interference and corruption in the medical field. Entering the 2020s, however, the production of medical dramas appeared to slow down as the urgency of real-world medical issues became increasingly pronounced, particularly due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the medical crisis. Amid this trend, Netflix's The Trauma Code: Heroes on Call (2025) made its presence felt by portraying the current state of a medical industry dominated by capitalistic logic and the realities faced by medical professionals as healthcare workers. Against this backdrop, SBS's Doctor X: Mafia in White (Doctor X), which began airing last month, is a welcome work heralding the return of the full-fledged socially conscious medical drama. Like White Tower, this drama inherits the socially critical nature of its Japanese original. During its adaptation, however, it expanded its subject matter to include not only pressing issues in the medical field, such as the introduction of CCTV cameras in operating rooms and the expansion of medical school enrollment quotas, but also darker chapters of Korean history. This has generated considerable repercussions. In particular, episodes 6 and 7, which dealt with the May 18 Democratic Uprising, presented a groundbreaking approach, even when viewed alongside previous works that have addressed the same historical event. Unlike earlier dramas about the May 18 Democratic Uprising, which were historical period pieces that directly transported viewers to the actual setting of the events, Doctor X approached Gwangju through the universal and contemporary perspective of a medical drama. By bringing to light the voice of a victim who had spent a lifetime in Gwangju and trapped in memories of the past, burdened by the "sorrow of the survivors" and a sense of guilt, the drama portrayed the pain of the May 18 Democratic Uprising as a wound that still exists "here and now." In this respect, Doctor X's approach is one that deserves to be remembered for a long time. The fact that critics who have stirred up what is commonly called a "political bias controversy" were so taken aback that they exclaimed, "Why bring May 18 into a medical drama?" appears to be a consequence of precisely this impact. Looking back, addressing historical and political events in socially conscious medical dramas is by no means unusual. For example, Season 1 of Dr. Romantic dealt with the case involving the alleged manipulation of the cause of death of farmer Baek Nam-gi, while JTBC's Life (2018) drew on the historical tragedy known as the "Seosan Pioneering Corps," which occurred during the Park Chung-hee administration. At the time, such attempts were praised for broadening the horizons of medical dramas. It is therefore almost contradictory that Doctor X is now being criticized for taking a similar approach. Doctor X is now faithfully following the path of its noble mission, writing a new chapter in the history of the Korean medical drama genre. n.news.naver.com/article/032… #DoctorX #sbs드라마 #KimJiWon #김지원 #닥터X하얀마피아의시대