Hi, this is Mamang Marya serving you with my k-drama reviews! Feel free to view, vote and comment, I TRIED MY HARDEST TO BE SPOIL FREE BUT ITS YOUR CHOICE TO TAKE RISK ^^
Hallu! I just finished another drama this week, like usual I will try my best to prevent spoiler for people who haven't watch this drama yet.
Our drama for today is called Life, it was written by Lee Soo-Yeon and directed by Hong Jong-Chan. It's a 16-episode Medical drama aired on July 23-September 11, 2018, shown in JTBC.
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PLOT
A power struggle ensues at a hospital. Ye Jin-Woo is a doctor in the emergency medical center at Sangkook University Hospital. He has a warm heart and charisma. He admires hospital director Lee Bo-Hoon. One day, he hears from his brother Ye Sun-Woo that the hospital director placed government subsidy money into his personal bank account. On that night, the hospital director dies after falling off an apartment building rooftop where vice-director Kim Tae-Sang lives. His death is ruled an accident caused by a heart attack. Ye Jin-Woo believes otherwise.
Koo Seung-Hyo begins work as the president of Sangkook University Hospital. He is cool-headed and ambitious. As a businessman, he wants the hospital to become profitable. Other people tell him that running a hospital is different from running other businesses, but Koo Seung-Hyo doesn't see why a hospital is any different. So that the hospital can start turning a profit, he decides to transfer 3 departments, including the money hemorrhaging emergency medical department, to other hospitals. Hospital staff members oppose that idea and a strike is led by the vice-director. Meanwhile, Koo Seung-Hyo experiences the dark side of running a hospital, including cover-ups on patient's deaths.
You may realize by now that I like watching medical dramas, that's probably the main reason I decided to try this one. This drama, however, delivered a different perspective of what's possibly happening inside the hospital. Not only situations that affect the patients but mainly stuff that affect the hospital and its employees as a whole.
This drama focused on the politics side of medical industry and how rules and regulations that affects the doctors and nurses (and other medical employee) will also affects how they could treat a patient. That running a medical industry is really different from running a corporate company. It's a fresh idea to me that for the first time, instead of showing how great doctors are, they make people realize that doctors are human, too, and could commit medical errors. They even showed more death of patients than the cured ones.
Its like a documentary on how medical industry in real life is toxic due to lack of employees and access to better machines and tools. That hospitals shouldn't be treated as profit-making business as people, no matter their status, should be able to get health care that they need. They also demonstrate the power of medical in regard with the politics affair.
I also like how this drama didn't have the common antagonist-protagonist plot I have watched in the past. Maybe because they aimed to be realistic as much as possible, the supposed protagonist isn't always right and smart and brave while the supposed antagonist isn't bad just because he likes to step on people, sometimes they do things for good reasons and are doing as told by someone more powerful.
