Doctor X hits 18.5% ratings by episode 4, tops Netflix non-English TV chart

From 11.4% to 18.5% in four episodes

SBS's Doctor X: The Era of the White Mafia hit 18.5% nationwide viewership on October 17—its fourth episode. That's up 3.4 percentage points from episode 3's 15.1%. Seoul metropolitan area ratings for the same episode came in at 18.4%.

The climb has been steep since the October 9 premiere. Episode 1 opened at 11.4%. Episode 2 followed at 14.9%, episode 3 at 15.1%, and now episode 4 at 18.5%. Four consecutive weeks of growth. The show also ranked No. 1 in Netflix's Global Non-English TV Shows category.

The drama airs every Friday and Saturday at 9:50 PM on SBS.

Kim Ji-won as the surgeon who always wins

Kim Ji-won plays Gye Su-jeong, a freelance surgeon dispatched to Guseodae University Hospital. She works exactly eight hours a day, clocks out at 6 PM sharp, and collects a special allowance per surgery. Her job: dismantle the hospital's entrenched corruption using her surgical skill.

The show is a medical noir adapted from the Japanese TV Asahi series Doctor X: Surgeon Daimon Michiko, reworked for a Korean setting. Lee Jung-eun plays Jang Hee-sook, head of the doctor dispatch agency. Son Hyun-joo plays Boo Seung-gwon, the newly appointed hospital director.

Gye Su-jeong's bluntness has driven a lot of the buzz. She tells the university hospital doctors: "People who only studied to make money and get promoted. Humans without ethics, beliefs, or thoughts, just stupidly smart. You bow before professors and raise your heads before patients. You really suck."

Episode 4's shocking ending

Actor Jang Seung-jo made a special appearance as Na Dae-il, a newly appointed surgery professor at Guseodae Hospital. During his time as a military doctor, he drove a patient—Kwon Chung-hyun, suffering severe internal bleeding from abuse—to a rural clinic and performed emergency surgery alone rather than risk the transport time to a military hospital.

Episode 4 ended with Gye Su-jeong discovering the initials "D.N" carved into Kwon Chung-hyun's liver during surgery. A detail that points directly back to Na Dae-il. The show is now one episode away from the 20% threshold.