A sweet and inspiring romance between two doctor characters who are both experiencing professional "slumps" in their practices (that are not their fault!), I found Doctor Slump (2025) absolutely darling, riveting, and beautifully acted by its two leads, the always delightful Park Shin Hye (Tree Of Heaven, Stairway To Heaven, Heirs, Flower Boys Next Door, Doctors, Pinocchio) and her hard-working, handsome co-star Park Hyung Sik (Our Blooming Youth, Soundtrack #1, Heirs, Nine: 9 Time Travels, and member of K-pop group "ZE:A"). Their amazing chemistry together on this series received pretty high ratings for small cable station jtbc, over 8%. As I watched it I could easily see why by the very first episode, and I was hooked. I watched all sixteen episodes in only two days!

The second main leads were fun to watch as well, as their on-screen relationship developed: the versatile Yoon Park (Fanletter Please, Radio Romance, Good Doctor, Bridal Mask) and funny Kong Seong Ha (Daily Dose Of Sunshine, Jirisan, Dr. Brain). I found myself smiling whenever they had scenes together. Their roles entailed playing single parents who fall in love, a theme which has become more frequent in Korean dramas the last few years, no doubt reflecting an increased reality in South Korea. I find it refreshing (and the child actors are always so cute).  

Director Oh Hyun Jong (Find Me In Your Memory, Dr. Jin) did a masterful job creating a memorable tale of romantic love blossoming despite many challenges in the characters' lives. The screenplay by Baek Sun Woo was realistic but not too harsh in nature, which I really appreciated, since when I decided to watch this I was not in the mood to watch a complicated medical story with lots of operation scenes. Thankfully there were very few surgical scenes, a pleasant change compared to most K-dramas about doctors. This drama was a perfect choice in that regard: although the two main physician characters did face some serious challenges, both personal and professional, the audience senses from the beginning that deep down they have the inner strength to overcome them. I think it's a neat concept to show the kind of healing that can happen when two physicians are in a professional slump and can end up concentrating on other things in life besides medicine. They can learn to heal themselves first before they attempt to heal others.

THE STORY:

We follow the story of two former high school rivals, plucky Yeo Jeong Woo (Park Hyung Sik) and far more serious Nam Ha Neul (Park Shin Hye). At Yeongwon High School they were the two top students and were always competing with one another for the highest grades. When Jeong Woo won a contest Ha Neul would be furious, and when Ha Neul beat out Jeong Woo he temporarily became frazzled and would act out against her, such as when he was put on the lunch serving task line he would deliberately only spoon out vegetables to her and no meat.

Their mutual dislike of each other became infamous in the school body. They both wanted to go to the top colleges and both wanted to become doctors. Ha Neul knew she had to work her tail off for scholarships since her widowed Mom, Kong Wol Seon (Jang Hye Jin), who ran a noodle shop with her brother, Ha Neul's uncle Kong Tae Seon (Hyun Bong Sik), while supporting Ha Neul's lazy younger brother Nam Ba Da (Yoon Sang Hyeon, funny performance) would not be able to pay the tuition alone for a top college education for her smart daughter.   

Then we skip ahead fourteen years. Jeong Woo has become a famous, wildly successful plastic surgeon at La Beaute Plastic Surgery Clinic, and Ha Neul has become an anesthesiologist at Daehan National University Hospital. Ha Neul is unfortunately bullied at work by her short-tempered male boss, Kim Sang Geun (Oh Ryoong). He treats her badly because he knows she is a far better anesthesiologist than he is; on numerous occasions he has frozen in the operating room and Ha Neul had to take over for him so the surgeries could be completed successfully. Afterwards he will throw medical papers in her face, or deliberately bump into her harshly, to vent his frustration with his own ineptitude and malpractice. She takes his poor and unethical behavior silently for quite a long time, not wanting to lose her job and her place in the hospital.

However, it is obvious even to Ha Neul that she is becoming a more pathetic, forlorn person by the day, continuing to tolerate this abuse. She wisely seeks mental health counseling by a very kind psychiatrist (Lee Seung Joon, beautiful cameo performance) who determines she is clinically depressed and prescribes her appropriate medicine that will help her get through her dark days. With the medicine affecting her positively Ha Neul finally gains the courage to tell off the physician who has abused her routinely for a long time. She resigns from her job of her own free will, convinced she can eventually find another, better job, elsewhere.

Around the same time this is happening in Ha Neul's life, Jeong Woo has experienced his own terrible situation at work. A new female patient of his, the girlfriend of a casino owner, suddenly has heart failure in the operating room while under general anesthesia and Jeong Woo can't revive her. The publicity of this tragic event causes the clinic to lose patients and Jeong Woo becomes unemployed. He has to face an expensive wrongful death lawsuit and it appears someone had set him up deliberately to fail that day so that his patient would die. Jeong Woo is suspicious of the anesthesiologist on staff that day during the surgery, and even his best friend Min Kyung Min (Oh Dong Min) seems to behave very suspiciously regarding the tragedy. Soon it appears someone is tailing Jeong Woo as well, and he eventually discovers hidden pen cameras in his home and former office. 

Jeong Woo has to sell everything he owns to pay his debts and he moves into a new apartment ... which coincidentally is in the same building where Ha Neul lives with her family! They happen to meet on the rooftop and are startled to recognize one another so many years after high school. (Very funny scene, embedded above in the YouTube video). Both doctors are in very bad slumps in their careers and when they eventually start discussing their situations together they soon become friends. (I like that the script emphasized that doctors are human too and need time off to relax from very stressful jobs).

They do fun things together like travel to the beach to watch the sunrise, play video games at the arcade, get together socially with mutual friends in the medical field, single Dad Bin Dae Yeong (Yoon Park) and single Mom Lee Hong Ran (Kong Seong Ha). Eventually Ha Neul even convinces Jeong Woo to seek mental help like she did, since it had helped her so much to go forward more productively in life. He agrees.

As they heal themselves and each other in their personal lives they eventually fall in love. After more dramatic twists and turns in their personal and professional lives, including Jeong Woo finally learning who had been out to get him that day in the plastic surgery clinic when the patient had died during what was supposed to be a routine procedure. (I am not revealing that, you'll have to watch to find out who and why and how!). ;) 

Doctor Slump is simply a refreshing, beautiful romance to watch, with touches of both comedy and melodramatic suspense. I loved every scene that Park Shin Hye and Park Hyung Sik were in together -- I think I smiled so much that my face must have had new cracks placed in it, LOL! All the other cast members were perfect as well, and often had me laughing out loud. This is definitely a drama not to be missed and I hope it stays on Netflix for many years to come. Enjoy!