Kim Ji-won's surgeon clocks out at 6 PM sharp in SBS's 'Doctor X'

A surgeon who leaves on the dot

SBS's Doctor X: The Era of White Mafia premiered October 9. Kim Ji-won's Kye Su-jeong is already a different kind of TV doctor. Written by Pyeon Seong-geun and directed by Lee Jeong-rim, the Friday-Saturday drama introduces a freelance surgeon whose contract is brutally specific: eight hours a day, a night-surgery allowance, and zero duties outside the operating room.

When the 6 PM alarm goes off, she walks out. Mid-conversation, mid-anything. After finishing a procedure faster than anyone else on the floor, she downs a cup of instant ramen in one shot. (It's a character beat, but it lands.)

Who Kye Su-jeong is and how she got here

She graduated from an overseas university, spent time doing volunteer medical work in remote areas for refugees, then returned to Korean hospitals through a doctor placement agency. Her priority is patients' quality of life above everything else. She has no patience for colleagues who protect their own careers at a patient's expense.

On her first day, she confronted the hospital director in a surgical conference after he pushed for open surgery on an 80-year-old patient with post-COVID complications who didn't need it. She told the assembled professors directly: "You don't stop the director's surgery for your own advancement."

Episode 1 ending and what comes next

By the end of the first episode, Kye Su-jeong simultaneously saved the collapsed hospital director and a patient in shock—both in the same operating room—and earned the hospital's formal recognition. She has since been hired at Guseo University Hospital.

Son Hyun-joo plays Bu Seung-gwon, the incoming hospital director. Doctor X airs Fridays and Saturdays on SBS.