Though a promising resident doctor with top grades, Jung-suk saw all her dreams slip away after an afternoon of passion with In-ho led to a life-altering pregnancy.
At the time, In-ho was dating fellow resident Choi Seung-hui (Myung Se-bin), whose good family delighted Ae-sim, until his child with Jung-suk changed everything. But for who?
The pregnancy forced Jung-suk to give up on her career and become a hard-working wife and mother who serves at the beck and call of her mother-in-law, who has never failed to hide her disappointment in her daughter-in-law and her poor background.
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Yet what of In-ho, who was equally responsible for the unplanned pregnancy? His career marched on, and he gained a dutiful wife in the process, one who keeps his home in order, his children fed and his mother occupied.
Not only does In-ho soar in the medical field to become a top surgeon, he never even had to give up on his first love Seung-hui, as the pair have been having an affair for years.
If all that does not sound grossly unfair on its own, Jung-suk’s life gets a lot worse before it gets any better.
One day, she collapses in a department store while buying sunglasses for her husband’s holiday with his mistress – she believes that he is going to a medical conference – and is rushed to the emergency room.
Jung-suk, suffering from jaundice and with a failing liver, is in need of an organ transplant. There is a suitable donor in her family, but the problem is that that person is In-ho – and he is not ready to go under the knife for her.
Even if he was, Ae-sim’s objections put paid to that medical solution.
Thankfully, Jung-suk is not exclusively surrounded by selfish monsters. Her children – first born son Seo Jung-min (Song Ji-ho), a medical student pressured into following in his father’s footsteps, and daughter Seo I-rang (Lee Seo-yeon) – are shocked by their father’s behaviour, although powerless to help their mother.
Jung-suk also has the dashing doctor Roy Kim (Min Wook-hyuk) in her corner. She first meets him during an emergency, after a man collapses on a bus and Jung-suk tries to help but freezes on the spot. Roy is walking by when the ambulance arrives and they ride with the patient to the hospital together.
They soon meet again, as Roy also works at the hospital where Jung-suk is admitted – In-ho refused to have her admitted to his own hospital.
No thanks to In-ho and her mother-in-law, Jung-suk eventually does find a donor and recovers, but when she returns home she is a different woman. She will not lift a finger to help them and they are left to fend for themselves.
During this period of rebellion, Jung-suk questions how she found herself in this situation and what she abandoned her career for. Finding no reasonable answer, she decides to return to the path she originally chose, much to the chagrin of her husband.
She dusts off her books and prepares to retake the residency exam. She aces the test and, though she encounters ageist opposition when she looks for a job, she lands a post in the same hospital as her husband and his mistress.
Doctor Cha plays with themes of female empowerment and clearly outlines the patriarchal divide that still pervades society, but indulges in a few gender stereotypes of its own at the same time.
The show begins with Jung-suk at her dressing table applying her make-up before heading out to visit her dermatologist friend for a skin treatment. Later on, following her operation, her first act of rebellion is to use her husband’s credit card to go on a shopping spree.
There is a slight disconnect between images like these and the story’s themes, but the show also feels very familiar. Such minor quibbles aside, Doctor Cha has so far delivered, with a clean set-up, clear style and comfortably relatable storyline.
Much of this is down to Uhm, whose bubbly and dominating central performance powers the show. Women doctors may not be invisible on Korean screens, but as lead characters they are still very much in the minority – look no further than the 4:1 male-female ratio of the Hospital Playlist leads.This alone makes Doctor Cha a refreshing medical drama.
Doctor Cha is streaming on Netflix.
