Two years after the global success of Queen of Tears, Kim Ji-won returned to SBS on 9 October 2026 with Doctor X: Mafia in White, a medical drama with a noir edge that is also streaming on Netflix. She plays Gye Su-jeong, a freelance surgeon who does not know how to lose.
The series is adapted from Doctor-X, TV Asahi’s Japanese hit that ran from 2012 to 2021. In the Korean version, directed by Lee Jung-rim (VIP) from a script by Pyeon Seong-geun, Gye Su-jeong is sent by an agency for doctors-for-hire to a large teaching hospital, Guseo University Seonam Medical Center. She takes on the operations nobody else dares attempt and exposes the hospital’s corruption. Her colleagues call her “the mad dog of the operating room”.
“I never fail”
The four-minute highlight reel SBS released before the premiere summed the character up in one line: “I never fail.” The cast around Kim Ji-won includes Lee Jung-eun as the head of the agency, Son Hyun-joo as the hospital director and Kim Woo-seok as a young intern. The series runs to twelve episodes, broadcast on Fridays and Saturdays at 21:50 Seoul time.
Viewers have followed. According to Nielsen Korea, the first episode drew a nationwide rating of 11.4%, and the fourth reached 18.5%, with every episode so far topping its time slot.
From “The Heirs” to “Queen of Tears”
Born in Seoul on 19 October 1992, Kim Ji-won began her career in the early 2010s. She was noticed in 2013 in The Heirs as Yoo Rachel, a role that won her the New Star Award at the SBS Drama Awards. In 2016, Descendants of the Sun had already put her in a doctor’s coat, as the army doctor Yoon Myung-joo. The part brought her several awards, including best supporting actress at the APAN Star Awards.
Next came Fight for My Way (2017), a romantic comedy about young adults who refuse to give up on their dreams, and the historical epic Arthdal Chronicles (2019). In 2022, My Liberation Notes showed another side of her acting: as Yeom Mi-jeong, a quiet office worker worn down by her suburban life, she earned a best actress nomination at the Baeksang Arts Awards.
The big turning point came in 2024 with Queen of Tears. Her role as Hong Hae-in, heiress to a department store group, made her a star far beyond Korea, helped by its release on Netflix.
Playing against type
After a romantic heroine, Kim Ji-won has chosen a brusque woman who is sure of her talent and indifferent to hierarchy. The part puts her at the centre of a genre, the hospital drama, in which the brilliant lone surgeon has long been a man. She already has another project lined up, Detective Park Mi-ok, for which no broadcast date has yet been announced.
© Photo: TV10 - CC BY 4.0 (cropped)
