Kim Ji-won's 'Doctor X' Hits Record-High 21.3% Viewership

SBS's Friday-Saturday drama "Doctor X: Mafia in White" (Dakteo X: Hayan Mapia-ui Sidae) has broken its own ratings record again. The show peaked at 21.3%, a new high for the series. Nationwide, it recorded 19.5%.

The sixth episode aired on the 24th. It opened with a flashback to the first meeting between surgeon Gye Su-jeong (played by Kim Ji-won) and Baraka (Jeon Ji-on), a boy who has since died.

Gye was doing volunteer medical work in Lagota, a country torn by civil war, when a soldier threatened her life. Baraka saved her. He then asked if she was really Doctor X, the surgeon known as "the hand of God." His younger sister, Nima (Jeon Aisha), had been shot, and he begged for help. The two ran together onto a battlefield under heavy gunfire to save her.

The story then returned to the present at Guseodae Hospital. Gye's new patient is Oh Sang-beom (Ha Sung-kwang), a man who has lived with the trauma of a wound for 46 years.

More than 40 years ago, Oh was shot through the head. Doctors at the time could not remove the bullet fragments lodged in his brain, so they stayed there. He still suffers from seizures, convulsions, headaches, and visions and voices that are not real. The other doctors at Guseodae Hospital pushed back. They said the surgery had a very low chance of success and would draw heavy public attention. Gye was the only one who stepped up.

His symptoms were not the only problem. All of his medical records had been lost, and Oh refused even basic tests, let alone surgery. So "Team Gye Su-jeong" went to see him in person. That included Gye, Jang Hee-sook (Lee Jung-eun), Park Tae-kyung (Kim Woo-seok), and Jo Won-jin (Lee Jin-hee).

The episode also revealed Oh's past. During the May 18 incident, known in Korea as 5.18, he was a young boy who looked up to his older brother. For more than 40 years, he has missed that brother, whose body was never found. His last words before he stopped speaking for years were: "Everything is my fault. Dying seems easy, so I want to pay for it by living in pain like this."

Oh had been relying on painkillers and living like a walking corpse. The people around him hoped he would find a reason to live again. Gye changed his mind with one line: "If you do nothing, there's no chance at all."

The relief did not last. Looking at his brain CT scan, Gye asked, "What on earth happened that day?" It was a sign that this would not be a simple case.

Gye had been watching Oh closely, and she realized he was seeing visions of his dead brother. "It seems like this matters to you," she told him. She explained that if he had the surgery, he would no longer see his brother.

Once Oh heard that the brother by his side was only a symptom, he said he would not go through with the surgery. Watching him long for his brother, Gye thought of Baraka. She understood how he felt and decided to wait until he was ready.

That night, Oh vanished from his hospital room, and the hospital was thrown into chaos. Security camera footage showed he had gone up to the roof. Park and Jo rushed after him.

Oh was standing at the very edge of the railing. From there, he saw a former president, the man behind the incident, being flown in by helicopter. His trauma came flooding back, and he began to thrash. At the same moment, Gye was racing toward the hospital.

For a medical drama, the episode pushed past the operating room. Its hardest case was not the fragments in Oh's head, but the history he had never been able to put down.