Disney+ K-drama Doctor Lawyer: So Ji-sub returns in punchy medical-legal drama mash-up
- So plays a hotshot surgeon turned lawyer who saves lives whether he’s in an operating theatre or a courtroom. An early flashback explains his switch of career
- The actor cuts a dapper figure with his broad shoulders and deep-set eyes, but his character is too idealised to be relatable. There’s time for that to change
This article contains spoilers.
Two of the most popular Korean drama genres get a punchy mash-up in Doctor Lawyer, starring So Ji-sub, in which the chiselled star gets to the top of not one, but two of South Korea’s most prized professions.
Early in the opening episode of the MBC series, the writers of Doctor Lawyer distil the enduring pleasures of legal and medical dramas when hotshot doctor-turned-lawyer Han Yihan (So) explains in voiceover that the “courtroom is like an operating room” in that it’s that rare place with the power to end a life or begin one anew.
This maxim is no mere generalisation – it applies to Yihan himself, whose has found himself either scrubbed up in operating theatres or dressed to impress in courts of law.
These locations, central to medical and legal practice respectively, are primed for drama but they are also endpoints in themselves; for the experts who operate in them, they represent the culmination of years of education and experience but also the complex tapestry of relationships and regulations that keep them going.