I’d like to rewatch: Doctor Stranger...surely a drama starring Lee Jong-seok as a doctor who was kidnapped and raised in North Korea still has some entertainment value, right?

You'd think so @daebakgrits but you'd be wrong. I tried rewatching it just last month with exactly the same belief but somehow the drama seems to have gotten worse over time. The FL was even more annoying on rewatch and the ML ending up with her instead of Kang So-ra was a travesty. Definitely one of those 'aged like milk' dramas 😖.

My own pick would also be Hospital Playlist (Season 1!), less for the medical drama part and more for the awesome five-some. Also Jun-wan is life 🥰.

Romantic Doctor Teacher Kim is my life drama.

I've liked medical dramas! So far, I've watched Medical Top Team (Ju Ji-hoon) Doctors (Kim Rae-won, Park Shin-hye), Romantic Doctor Teacher Kim, Good Doctor, Ghost Doctor and of course, Hospital Playlist. If I had to choose one, I would choose Ghost Doctor. I loved the bromance!

I've rewatched Good Doctor an unhealthy amount of times. 😆💚

Probably the basic choice, but it’s Hospital Playlist for me all the way.

Romantic Doctor Teacher Kim is my ultimate medical drama! I don't tend to reach for medical dramas, but I love this one. Love watching Han Suk Kyu as Dr. Kim Sabu! Good people. Saving lives. Heart-warming moments.

Hospital Playlist is a very close 2nd. Both shows have lovely characters and tugged at my heartstrings. RDTK had some more thrills/suspense & excitement though.

Ooh, thanks for reminding me about 'You Who Forgot Poetry'. It immediately popped to the top of the list.

What others...

'Marriage Not Dating' had a plastic surgeon male lead. Does that count?

'Ghost Doctor' Starring Rain started mediocre then steadily improved until it gave a satisfying finale. Unlike the other dramas that year that started off hot and failed to cross the finish line.

I want to say Thank You, as there sure are a lot of medical emergencies on that island (similar to Doc Martin), but it doesn't feel like a medical drama if it's not in a hospital the whole series, so I'll pick Golden Time with an earnest Lee Sun-kyun and an unusually sedate Hwang Jung-eum as residents mentored by Lee Sung-min who is great as always.

Live Up To Your Name because Kim Nam Gil 😁

Hospital Playlist for the win I love the main characters and I liked the patient stories too. Medical drama is one of my genres as back in the day ER was my favourite tv show only surpassed by West wing when the original cast disappeared and we barely saw my favourite character Carter.

Mine is Romantic Doctor Teacher Kim, now only know as Dr. Romantic. The idealistic triple boarded Kim Sabu got me watching medical dramas again (after being burned by too many seasons of Gray’s Anatomy—I stopped watching after McDreamy died.) And YYS made me want to go back to residency to find my true love again. 😆

Hospital playlist season 1. Hands down. No need for any explanations.

Not bid on medical dramas but THE GOOD DOCTOR stands high on my list, together with EMERGENCY COUPLE.

I think I've only seen one drama involving the medical field and that was Live Up To Your Name. I liked it and I think it was cool seeing old school and modern medical practices.

Hands down, it’s Romantic Doctor Teacher Kim. Ok, now known as Doctor Romantic. I should say Doctor Romantic 1 & 2. I liked these better than Hospital Playlist. Actually we can’t compare these two because they’re totally different aside from being in a hospital setting. Doctor Romantic is very compelling. I love the leads and the bad guys. Great acting!!!

I agree with the sentiment that hospital themed dramas are boring af. I couldn’t care less about the medical jargon and the stupid hospital politics. It’s why I’m not too fussed about the onslaught of lawyer dramas these days. If done right, the cases are at least interesting. Forest of Secrets and Extraordinary Attorney Woo are some of my favourites.

But if I had to name a medical themed drama it would either be Hospital Playlist or Life. While I enjoyed these shows they were both flawed and irritated me. HP shouldn’t have been two seasons and it dragged, and Life while well done for the most part, the slight ableism kinda irked me. Yes the show treated it’s disabled character with far more dignity than say the god awful drama My Love Eun-Dong. But still something seemed off. Sun-woo getting rejected by No-eul wasn’t my issue, it was the fact that the other three able-bodied protagonists got a lowkey romance whereas Sun-woo did not.

White Tower (MBC 2007).
It's not your typical medical drama with romance to draw in more viewers. It's heavy on the politics, like a political sageuk done right.
Kim Myung-min gave the performance of his life, sweeping every awards that year.

Honorable mention: Romantic Doctor Teacher Kim and Hospital Playlists.

Dishonorable mention: Dr Jin, but the recaps, and comments were hilarious 😆 🤣.

Can I say Hospital Playlist for the third time? Best part is No mundane hospital politics and only patients and doctors.

Not a majority choice, but my favourite is New Heart starring Ji Sung.

Between Hospital Playlist which is centered around the doctors and patients, and Life, which is centered around hospital politics and corporate shenanigans (I love this ingredients so much btw), I'll go with Hospital Playlist.

An old one that I really liked was Obstetrics and Gynecology Doctors. I liked the fact the drama was focused on the FL. The ML had a beautiful smile. Song Joon-Ki was a baby in this one.

In recent ones, the first season of Romantic Doctor Teacher Kim is really good.

My vote goes to DR. ROMANTIC seasons 1 and 2. I especially loved the way they handled the often-seen arc of a character whose family member dies in a (big) hospital, whereupon the character decides to become a doctor such that she/he can take revenge on said (big) hospital. Yes, it is always a big hospital – that only wants to take care of rich and powerful people.

Can't wait for season 3.

I have a handful of medical themed dramas that I liked/loved that comes top of mind: Hospital Playlist, Doctor Prisoner, A Poem A Day, Lifeand Live Up To Your Name. Thank You is a lovely healing drama too anyone need to see Jang Hyuk in a heartwarming role should check it out.

Without even having to think about it: Hospital Playlist.

By the way, last week I tried to watch the first season of Dr. Romantic, but gave up after the first episode. Medical series generally don't really interest me much, so I need to be captivated by the characters, but I just found them exhausting and unsympathetic.

Given my unabashed love for writer Lee Soo-yeon, it would come as no surprise that I picked Life. It gave me so many unforgettable characters who were brought to life by a number of seasoned actors. Lee Kyu-hyung's Seon-woo was such a rare character in dramaland, and I'm so glad I found him here. And Gu Seung-hyo is still one of the best antihero (though I hesitated to call him that, he was such a complex human being) I've watched in k-drama.

Not only that, I still couldn't stop marveling at how this drama elevated medical drama beyond case-of-the-week format. It reminded me that part of hospital work was management work, and that it would be intricate and unique to that particular setting. At times Life felt like a slice-of-life drama of people working in middle-upper management line, which was a welcome deviation from the usual interpretation of those genres.

Honorable mention to Hospital Playlist for making the dramaland's doctors looked human with all their flaws, instead of the mad geniuses dramaland liked to make us believe.

Despite my aversion to medical shows (which I avoid watching), a pair of my favorite series are medical dramas 😅
My heart is divided between Live up to your name and Hospital Playlist (1&2). If I only can pick one, I pick Live up to your name because of the good memories it brings me and the emotional ride it was while watching it (in three days).

Medical Drama
if medical terms a priority then Medical Top Team and if fun factor then Ghost Doctor and if overall perfection then Romantic Doctor

(sorry just one is way tooo hard work to narrow down)

White Tower. It shook me up so bad when I first saw it I thought I'd never want to see it again but I've gone back to it several times over the years. An acting feast for a bunch of actors. If I could pick a runner-up it would be Hur Jun, which is still one of the greatest of all sageuk dramas. An acting feast for Jeon Kwang-ryul, who made such an impression in it on the people of Kurdistan that they named a hospital after the character & invited the actor to come visit.

At first, I wanted to say sorry, but I'm a big Rain and Kim Bom fan, so I have to go with the Ghost Dr, but then I saw someone mention the Hospital Playlist and now I have to say sorry Ghost Dr, I have to go with Hospital Playlist. As a former medicine student that drama hit closest to home and the story was very warm, besides, I love music, I live by music and you tell me we have a bunch of Drs who have formed a band together? Of course, that would be my favorite one!

I haven’t seen Hospital Playlist yet, and all the other’s I’ve seen were crap. I liked the one hour or so of interactions between Seo Hyun Jin and Yoo Yeon Seok in Dr Romantic. Medical issues are just not interesting enough to fill too much of an episode with.

A fan of Partners for Justice series (two seasons). Medical examiner and prosecutor are main characters.

Might have a thing for medical examiner series, however. Also a fan of Imperial Coroner.

Vote for Ghost Doctor for the bromance and the ghosts.

Doctor John!

I shy away from legal and medical procedurals because of the inherit legal or medical script errors. But if I had to choose one, it would the hospice, healing drama CHOCOLATE.

Oh, it's definitely Live Up to Your Name for me. I have waxed poetic about this drama many times, but I think I love it more every time I think about it/watch a clip from it/listen to the soundtrack. It was my first Kim Nam-gil drama and he is just amazing in it - ridiculous, brilliant, swoony, goofy, sincere - and his pairing with Kim Ah-joong is just perfect. It's time travel in which both leads travel back and forth for once, and it has all the amazing fish out of water hijinks you could ever want. Plus, the scenes where they show traditional medicine and modern surgery working together were some of my very favorites, and there is no shortage of fantastic side characters either, both in the past and present. It ranks in my top 10 dramas I've ever seen for sure, and has the distinction of making me ugly cry multiple times (but, you know, in a good way hahaha).

Alas, I’m allergic to medical dramas. Can not think of a single K medical drama I’ve finished. Haughty experts, cheobol ceo battles, uh no X 1000 times.

What a topic and what great posts we have here!! I love watching medical dramas and it’s nigh impossible to pick. Top picks are Hospital Playlist (both seasons) and Romantic Dr Teacher Kim (both seasons).

Funnily enough I was rewatching last week different clips of HP and died laughing even when it’s a re-watch. The five characters are forever winning and honestly whether they are doctors or engineers or teachers, I will still watch them if same friend-dynamics exist. Another element is that HPs were shown during the hard lockdown era of COVID - it will always have a special place as our comfort food during an unprecedented time. Any news of what PD Shin will do next?

Then the week before last I binged Dr Romantic S2 in preparation for S3. Again, it is the compelling plots and character development that make it above the cut - but Kim Sa-bu is the biggest draw card. There will never be enough Han Suk-Kyu on my screen. He is the enough reason!

Going down the list would be Life for the writer Lee Soo-Yuen and another never-enough actor, Cho Seung-woo. The hospital corporate intrigue is so well done here (that Dr Romantic will shoot up to the very top if they do hospital politics as nuanced as this one). Of all the CSW performances, I like him in Life the best, ahead of Shi-mok in Forest of Secrets, for playing a seemingly grey yet black-and-white character at the same time.

I love all the other earlier dramas mentioned by other Beanies:
- Chocolate for its romance and the struggles of the main characters
- Thank You - nothing needs be said when you have Jang Hyuk and Gong Hyo-jin. It’s among my all time favorites. Hyukie is super smexy in this one.
- Obs & Gynae - it was a very popular drama at that time with interesting cases, plus a young Soon Joon-ki.
- Surgeon Bong Dal-hee - great story about intern with fantastic chemistry between Lee Yo-won and Lee Boem-soo
- Jejungwon - period medical drama with most aesthetic setting and costumes about western medicines setting its foot in late Joesun period.

The one that I should have watched but never watch is White Tower. My plan has always been watching the Korean version first and then the Taiwan version afterward but this is yet to happen….

Blood and open wound scare me. Plus people doing things in surgery room isn't really my thing. So Life is my ultimate choice. Lee Soo Yeon is doing radical stuff (when did she ever not) in Life by focusing more on politics and power struggle between management and doctors. Very novel in the sea of medical dramas.

If psychological health counts, I liked It's Okay, That's Love. Others were: Kill Me, Heal Me and It's Okay to Not Be Okay.

How about the 2023 comedy 'You Raise Me Up'? The female lead (played by Hani from 'Call It Love') was a urologist, if memory serves. It was certainly the funniest medical drama I can think of.

Romantic Doctor Season 1!

KBS’s A BEAUTIFUL MIND (2016) (Viki). I have a soft spot for this medical drama. It aired early in my kdrama viewing days and was my ninth kdrama. It also was my first Jang Hyuk drama and he was given such an unusual part in playing neurosurgeon Lee Young-oh. He played it to perfection. The two episodes cut (from 16 to 14) still annoys me to think about it.

If my cat could vote, she'd pick "Brain." Shin Hakyun earned his Baeksang nomination.

Only one? 🤧

I happen to love medical dramas a lot. Asking me to choose one is difficult but I'll go Romantic Doctor Teacher Kim. None of the two currently out have disappointed me and I absolutely love the dramas. Like screaming, howling, hooting, cringing and teary kind of love it.

Of course, Hospital Playlist is on the 'I love it' list. Still has some of the best OSTs of a drama in recent times.

Some other favorites include Yong Pal, It's Okay That's Love and Kill me Heal me

my choice: Dr. Romantic (Season 3 in a week away, yippe!!)
honorable mention: Hospital Playlist (the cases are heartwarming as well as heart wrenching at the same time) the imbalance on love plot...not so much.

i'll argue that i liked Dr. Stranger....if the plot stick to hospital setting and espionage. i still remember that scene where he announced to hospital board where did he get his medical license from. impactful.

Doctor Romantic 2 - I just loved the leads together and the overall vibe of the show.

I'd go without much doubt with Romantic Doctor Kim based on my pure enjoyment
I'd also choose Brain(Shin Ha Kyun one),remember enjoying it when i was more a drama newbie with all it's perks,Ghost Doctor of course,Live Up To Your Name

Not afan of medical drama overall. I don't know, it might something to do with my allergic with too much blood and at times can't stand surgery scene haha. I have no idea why I finished dr romantic.