On January 1, 2025, Professor Emeritus Rhonda J. Hughes, who has read a draft of my book, The Tao of K-drama, wrote to me:
I find myself returning often to your book, to check whether you have watched a particular drama or to reread your ideas on one I'm watching. I don't see Dr. Romantic on your list [of all the shows on which the book is based]. I can't recommend this highly enough. Kim Sabu is one of the great characters. You know I always lack words, but this drama, which I watched right before Hospital Playlist, is phenomenal. I found myself needing something to write on nearby, there were so many pearls of wisdom from Kim Sabu and others around him who narrate. I had a hard time with the graphic surgeries, but found a way to cover the screen so I could still read subtitles. This one was a real gift. So much about class and the way health care works or does not, how people come to terms with the [system].
There was a certainty urgency to this email that pushed Dr. Romantic to the top of my watchlist. Although I've instituted a "one hour of K-drama a day" practice, Dr. Romantic slipped those constraints -- I barely remembered to eat or do chores. I am regularly entranced by K-drama, but this was a whole new level of engagement. I was enthralled. It is no surprise that a medical drama would hold great interest -- it was Live Up to Your Name, Dr. Heo that first pulled me in. But Dr. Romantic got under my skin -- perhaps because it is the ethical issues that are at the heart of the show. While ethics might seem dry and distant, the show played them as the agonizing and life-changing decisions they really are.
K-dramas show us many perspectives -- in that way, they constitute "situation analysis." This strategy illuminates the dynamic forces and limited choices that protagonists face. If one is old enough, one has been in many roles: student, teacher, leader, patient. I have certainly reached that age. It was bewildering to watch a scene between an angry young doctor and the wise mentor and, having been in both roles, to feel so deeply what each of them was trying to communicate.
Many of the sequences were jarring. I'll tackle two that show the "Big Picture." The first had to do with three people who potentially had MERS (Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome) which is caused by a coronavirus. The emergency room in which the people were seeking care had to go on lockdown to contain potential spread, but there was minimal protective equipment available to those inside. This resonated so strongly with the our experiences with COVID-19, when hospital personnel were using garbage bags as protective gear and people all over were sewing cloth masks for them.
The second sequence had to do with a threat to close Doldam Hospital, where the story is taking place. It is not the modern, no-expense-spared hospital in Seoul, but rather a rundown country hospital which operates with just enough equipment, much of it ancient and barely functional. Emblematic of the state of affairs is the ultrasound, which people bang to get a clear image. As part of a power struggle, the director of the main hospital threatens to close Doldam and make it into a retirement community. He shrugs when people point out that it's a busy area with many highways and an acute need for trauma services. He doesn't hear or care about the people who will lose their jobs. All of this brought home to me the 2006 loss of Orange Memorial Hospital, the hospital that served my hometown, which was closed, like many community hospitals, to "save money." The costs to Orange were not relevant to the calculations, as many jobs were lost, ancillary businesses failed or relocated, and the buildings were left, to this day, a hulking eyesore in the city.
Many of sequences that got under my skin were those that depicted the young physicians doing the wrong thing and getting their heads handed to them. This happened to me a lot. Watching the show, I had a new appreciation for the tender care of the many mentors who got me through those tangles. When I was wrong, they helped me see my error. When I was right (or right-ish), they helped me manage the difficulties I faced. A part of the struggle of the main Young Doctor, Kang Dong-joo, is that he holds a resentment against his mentor, Kim Sa-bu. Kang Dong-joo knows, as a physician, that the resentment is unfounded, but he doesn't know how to let go. It is not until he learns that Kim Sa-bu protected him from his youthful acting out that he can fully accept Kim Sa-bu's mentorship. I am deeply touched by the opportunity to see mentorship in action -- it actually lifted decades of old remorse and resentment that lingered from my own growing up in medicine.
The bottom line of the show -- and the reason it got under my skin -- is that growing up in medicine is extremely difficult. On the one hand, young doctors live with the extreme beauty of caring for patients. Dr. Hughes, who is a mathematician, covered her television to block the surgery scenes. I adored them. The room for surgery is a called a "theater" and it is indeed the setting for great drama, the incredible beauty of the human interior, and the heroic actions that patch people back together to give them a new lease on life. It is different in psychiatry -- my specialty -- but no less dramatic, as the alcoholic person gets sober, the suicidal person finds new reasons to live or the person who is hearing voices gets back in touch with our shared reality. It is an extraordinary experience.
BUT the glory of caring-for-people is constantly in tension with the reality of medicine-as-business: hospitals that have to "make money," care that must be "paid for," choices about life and death because there isn't enough fill-in-the-blank to go around. Thus, the simple mistakes of not asking the right questions or seeing the right symptoms are only the beginning of the getting of wisdom. What is one supposed to do about the tortured care one is obligated to give? What about the exchange of fame and money for compliance with the rotten system?
Medicine is a path paved with painful choices, all at great cost not only to the self, but also to others.
After a lifetime of choices, one lives with the consequences. This is particularly what the show gets right about Kim Sa-bu's mentorship. He is not "kind" to his young mentees. He does not coddle them or express his affection. He sets the choices before them and lets them live with the consequences. This is the part that people like to overlook, me included. The easy choice that leads to cash and prizes seems great, but the high cost is often hidden behind the sparkle.
For sure, there is a wide spectrum of ways in which physicians experience these challenges. Nonetheless, the current arrangements of medicine have created a very high rate of burnout: according to the American Medical Association, it skyrocketed to 62% in 2022 and dropped to "only" 48% in 2024. One-third of physicians are considering retirement, including many young and mid-career physicians.
Towards the end of Season 1, two storylines converge. One was that the wealthy chairman of the board, who trusted Kim Sa-bu above all others, finds a way to say why he feels that way. And a young artist, who can't afford the healthcare he needs to live, gets an offer from the chairman who wants to buy his talent in exchange for his surgery. We soon see what is meant by this puzzling offer. Kim Sa-bu finds a book on his desk. He opens it to see a short graphic story about a rich miser who was hated by everyone. When he fell ill in the street, no one came to his aid, except one good Samaritan. The book ends with the question, "Do you remember who that was, Kim Sa-bu?"
The struggle to live an ethical life is not an easy one and there are many reasons for leaving the path. Happily, patients, friends, lovers, mentors, tragic reality -- there is so much to help us find our way again. We are the lucky ones, as Michael Lally always reminds me.
