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Pierce Conran

Lead cast: Lee Jae-wook, Shin Ye-eun
Latest Nielsen rating: 5 per cent
After his cameo as a dreamy doctor in the fantasy romcom Boyfriend on Demand earlier this year, Lee Jae-wook is back on screens slinging a stethoscope as the lead of the rural medical drama Doctor on the Edge, based on the webtoon Endurance Doctor by Kim Tae-poong.
Starring alongside him as a chipper local nurse is Shin Ye-eun, who last appeared in A Hundred Memories and The Murky Stream, which aired at the same time last autumn.


Lee plays Do Ji-ui, a gifted young plastic surgeon. But before we get to see him don his doctor’s gown, we meet him in army fatigues as he slogs his way through a training course at the beginning of his mandatory military service.
Since Ji-ui is a doctor, he can avoid joining the general infantry by taking on a posting as a public health doctor. However, he still needs to go through basic training and wait to be assigned.
All he asks for is that he does not get picked for the worst public health centre posting available – but that is precisely what happens when he gets his papers, and he packs his bags for the remote Pyeondong Island.
Things start to go awry even before he gets to the island. He needs to board a ferry to get there, but owing to a deep-seated fear of the sea, this is his first big obstacle. While he has some medication for such an occasion, he unwisely takes double the dose.

After hallucinating that one of the women on the ferry threw herself off during the voyage, he wakes up in a hospital bed. Fortunately, he is right where he needs to be – the Pyeondong Island Public Health Centre – but after having been brought in unconscious, he has not made the best first impression on his new colleagues.
Now he gets to learn why this post has earned its reputation. The medical centre is equipped with ancient supplies, his new room is infested with exotic creepy-crawlies, and the only local restaurant specialises in a mystery seafood stew that he retches at the sight of.
And all this before even meeting the mercurial and stubborn Pyeondong locals. Among them is Yuk Ha-ri (Shin), the woman from the boat, who has just returned from the mainland after a long time away. Just like Ji-ui, she seems to be reeling from a past trauma, only she hides hers better under a sunny disposition.
The pair meet when Ha-ri goes looking for his suitcase, which she had taken by mistake. In a flashback, we see that Ha-ri knocked Ju-ui out on the boat to prevent him from jumping in the water to “save” her. On land, she carted the unconscious young surgeon off to the public health centre on her back.

While the pair go through several awkward encounters – a prerequisite of any K-drama romcom – the misunderstandings are kept to a refreshing minimum in Doctor on the Edge, as is the early antagonism between the leads.
This allows us to get into the characters’ headspace straight away, while casting the show’s seaside setting and its colourful denizens into sharper focus from the outset.
That is not to say there is no room for conflict and shenanigans. Ha-ri soon joins the health centre as its youngest nurse, while Hyun Chi-yeon (Hong Min-gi, To My Beloved Thief), another handsome young doctor at the facility, is well placed to turn into Ji-ui’s romantic rival – once he begins to develop feelings for Ha-ri.
Given that he zooms around the remote island in an incongruous red sports car, Chi-yeon appears to have his own backstory, but for the moment, he merely fulfils the attractive and aloof K-drama archetype.

Fans of Lee Jae-wook and BL – Boys’ Love, a popular subgenre focusing on male homoerotic relationships typically created for a female audience – will get a kick out of Ji-ui’s steamy first encounter with the hunky Chi-yeon, when Ji-ui accidentally barges in on him in the buff after a shower.
The medical woes of the prickly locals who reluctantly visit the health centre give the show a little episodic backbone, but the real story here seems to be the emotional baggage that Ji-ui and Ha-ri have brought with them to this island – and how their experiences on Pyeondong will help them heal one another, as well as their cranky patients.
Doctor on the Edge is streaming on Disney+.


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Lee Jae-wook plays a gifted plastic surgeon and Shin Ye-eun a young nurse in this new Korean drama based around a rural medical centre


Lee Jae-wook plays a gifted plastic surgeon and Shin Ye-eun a young nurse in this new Korean drama based around a rural medical centre.


Disney+ K-drama Doctor on the Edge: Lee Jae-wook, Shin Ye-eun lead island medical romcom

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Lee Jae-wook plays a gifted plastic surgeon and Shin Ye-eun a young nurse in this new Korean drama based around a rural medical centre

Lee Jae-wook plays a gifted plastic surgeon and Shin Ye-eun a young nurse in this new Korean drama based around a rural medical centre