A practicing orthopedic surgeon has filed a formal broadcast complaint against SBS’s hit medical noir “Doctor X,” accusing the drama of portraying doctors as incompetent villains and warning it could distort the public’s view of real medicine.
According to Lee Daily’s October 15 report, the surgeon — identified only as “A” — announced on social media that he had requested a review of the drama. He argued the show repeatedly depicts hospital rounds as unnecessary chores, reduces medical staff to one-dimensional villains, and ignores the inherent uncertainty of medical practice.
“Dramatic exaggeration is understandable, but this could instill a wrong perception of medical reality,” he said, explaining why he filed the complaint. He noted that actual sanctions from the filing are unlikely, but felt raising the issue was necessary: “As a professional, I couldn’t just watch a false perception take root.”
Photos he shared show he filed the complaint on October 13 with the Korea Communications Standards Commission under the title “medical reality distortion and portrayal of medical personnel.”
SBS declined to take a position, saying only, “We have no separate position.”
The controversy comes at the height of the drama’s success. “Doctor X: The Era of the White Mafia,” which premiered October 9 and stars Kim Ji-won as genius surgeon Gye Su-jeong, drew a 14.9 percent nationwide rating by its second episode and has topped Netflix’s global non-English TV chart.
The complaint is now before the review commission; whether it leads to any action remains to be seen.
