SBS's Doctor X: Mafia in White is still on air, and nothing announced so far points to a cancellation. Episode 6, broadcast on Saturday, October 24, told the story of a patient shot during the May 18 Gwangju Democratic Uprising in 1980, and over the weekend a viewer filed a National Assembly petition asking for the show to be pulled. The same episode drew the drama's best rating yet: 19.5% nationwide, by Nielsen Korea's count.
What episode 6 showed
The patient is Oh Sang-beom, played by Ha Sung-kwang. He was shot in the head in Gwangju in May 1980, the bullet fragment could not be removed with the medicine of the time, and he has lived 46 years with pain and hallucinations. Gye Su-jeong, the surgeon played by Kim Ji-won, talks him into an operation. Korean reports describe flashbacks of tear gas and of bullets hitting civilians, a bus numbered 518, and a plot that treats the fragment as evidence that martial-law troops fired from helicopters. The episode ends with a fictional former president, Ji Doo-seok, brought unconscious to the same hospital.
The uprising began when citizens of Gwangju protested the extension of martial law by Chun Doo-hwan's military junta, and the crackdown left hundreds dead or missing. None of this storyline comes from TV Asahi's Doctor-X: Surgeon Michiko Daimon. It was written for the Korean version, which is where most of the objections start. Our premiere piece compares the remake with the Japanese original.
The petition and where it stands
The petition, titled "Petition on halting the broadcast of the SBS drama Doctor X" (HallyuMate translation), was posted on the National Assembly's public-consent petition board. It asks for three things: stop the broadcast, call the production team as witnesses to examine how the show was made, and have the broadcast review bodies look at it. The petitioner argues that the May 18 material has nothing to do with the plot and that a drama should not pick up an event whose details are still argued over in politics.
It passed the first threshold of 100 supporters, so the Assembly is now deciding whether to make it public, a review reported to take up to seven days. If it is published, it needs 50,000 signatures within 30 days to be sent to a standing committee. For now it is one viewer's request with 100 backers. Neither SBS nor the production company had released a statement as of Tuesday morning, October 27, Korea time.
Kim Ji-won's comments, a lawmaker and a bus stop
The lead actress has taken the most direct hits. Comments under Kim Ji-won's Instagram posts include "So it was a leftist drama" and "I'll boycott your work from now on" (HallyuMate translations), while other users answered that blaming an actor on her personal account for a script is unfair. Her side told Korean media on October 26 that it had to be careful about responding because the issue concerns the drama's content and adaptation.
Lee Ok-gyu, the chief producer at Studio S, posted the drama's poster on his Instagram Story the night episode 6 aired, with the words "no fear." He did not explain it.
The political reaction came from Lee Jin-suk, a People Power Party lawmaker. In a Facebook post on October 26 she wrote that the show had presented itself as a medical drama, then "put political messages first and broke its promise to viewers" (HallyuMate translation), and called the setup contrived. She also pointed to the name Ji Doo-seok, which she said appears to take one syllable each from former presidents Chun Doo-hwan and Yoon Suk Yeol. In the same post she said that depicting victims' suffering is a matter of free expression and that May 18 should not belong to one political camp or region. Her critics answered that she hosted an Assembly forum in August that was accused of downplaying May 18, and called the post another attack in the same vein.
The last complaint is about the set rather than the story. A resident filed a report with the Buk District office in Gwangju about a fictional "National 5·18 Cemetery" bus stop sign the crew put up in front of the Democracy Gate at the May 18th National Cemetery. The complaint asks whether the crew had permits and whether the sign got in the way of traffic, and says it is not about the episode's content. No response from the district office has been reported.
Ratings went up
Episode 6 rose to 19.5% nationwide from 17.5% for episode 5, according to Nielsen Korea, and passed the previous series high of 18.5% set by episode 4. Its peak during the broadcast reached 21.3%, according to Korean reports.
Doctor X has 12 episodes, airing Fridays and Saturdays at 9:50 p.m. KST. Episodes 7 and 8 are due on October 30 and 31, and if SBS keeps the schedule, the finale airs on November 14. Cast and episode details are on our Doctor X drama page.
