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Pierce Conran

4/5 stars
Lead cast: Ju Ji-hoon, Choo Young-woo, Ha Young
After headlining new shows in November (Love Your Enemy) and December (Light Shop), you might think a third consecutive leading role would be asking too much even for the most ardent Ju Ji-hoon fans.
That is far from the case, and indeed, the dapper star has saved the best for last with January’s thoroughly entertaining medical action drama The Trauma Code: Heroes on Call.


In K-dramas, surgeons are not merely good, they tend to be deities among men and women – scrubbed-up saviours celebrated for their “god hands” as they suture their way to medical glory, snatching even the most doomed patients out of death’s palm.
This new Netflix series, adapted from the webtoon Severe Trauma Center: Golden Hour, consciously leans into that stereotype.
It opens with Ju, as surgeon Baek Kang-hyuk, tearing across an open plain on a motorbike straight into an active war zone, where he slaloms around and under falling bombs until he finds someone to save.
Back in Korea, a different crisis is taking place – patients are dying in ambulances as they zigzag helplessly around Seoul, denied entry to overwhelmed emergency units.

The situation is particularly dire at Hankuk University Medical Centre, one of the top medical facilities in the country.
Here there is no dedicated trauma centre; instead, responsibility for caring for trauma cases is rotated through the hospital’s departments, each of which accepts them with reluctance. Meanwhile, its only dedicated trauma specialist collapses from overwork.
Kang Myung-hui (Kim Sun-young), Korea’s minister of health and welfare, takes an active interest, and recommends someone for the post: Baek Kang-hyuk.
The first person to meet Hankuk’s newest attending specialist is Yang Jae-won (Choo Young-woo, The Tale of Lady Ok), a resident in the colorectal department currently on trauma rotation.
He has his hands full with an emergency case he is ill-equipped to handle when Kang-hyuk, wearing a slick black suit, swoops into the accident and emergency ward and takes over, saving the patient.

Kang-hyuk’s heroism is laid on pretty thick, and up until this point, there’s really nothing else to the character.
Once he starts interacting with his bewildered new colleagues, who also include nurse Cheon Jang-mi (Ha Young, Doona!) – she at first mistakes him for a gangster – we are introduced to another very familiar K-drama male lead trope: superciliousness.
This is where the show transitions from a slick, high-octane parody of action series into something more fun and engaging.
Kang-hyuk has not even started work, but he stays with his first patients instead of attending his appointment ceremony, where all the senior doctors of the hospital and minister Kang twiddle their thumbs waiting for him.
He finally struts in an hour late and, rather than apologise for the delay, demands an apology from the stunned audience for the mess he has inherited.

Kang-hyuk is the fantasy figure that we all dream we could be. Without batting an eyelid, he stands up to injustice when he isn’t hopping into helicopters to save lives, all the while cutting a dashing figure with his grin and velvety voice.
The villain in the story is the hospital’s constant drive to increase profit margins, exemplified by the actions of various senior doctors – some of whom, won over by Kang-hyuk’s unflappable righteousness and all-round perfection, rethink their priorities.
However, The Trauma Code is sly enough to recognise that this tired corporate angle will only take it so far.
It looms constantly in the background but never overwhelms the main thread of the show’s story – Kang-hyuk’s derring-do and the trial by fire of his chosen underlings Jae-won and Jang-mi, who he affectionately dubs “Anus” and “Gangster”, nicknames they abhor.
Central to the show’s success is Ju, who has seldom been better as the picture-perfect Kang-hyuk, an enormously attractive role that complements his strong points.

The series reunites him with director Lee Do-yoon, whose debut was the big-screen thriller Confession. This features one of Ju’s best performances, yet was criminally ignored by most film fans.
Lee has a sharp handle on the dynamic demands of the show’s narrative, which sees its stethoscope-wielding protagonists not only glide through the halls and operating theatres of Hankuk University Medical Centre but also reach foggy mountaintops, enter burning buildings, deal with vehicle pile-ups and even enter a war zone in South Sudan, Africa.
At heart, The Trauma Code: Heroes on Call is a show that takes the medical action drama formula honed by shows like Dr. Romantic and both pares it down and amps it up. The characters are simpler, as is the drama, with the focus squarely on scratching viewers’ itch for heroic highs.
As such, the series does lose steam a little by the final stretch, but perhaps that is only because it shouldn’t be digested all at once. This is a terrific spread to look forward to, but not one to overindulge in.
The Trauma Code: Heroes on Call is streaming on Netflix.


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Ju Ji-hoon in a still from The Trauma Code: Heroes on Call. Photo: Netflix

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Ju Ji-hoon as surgeon Baek Kang-hyuk in a still from The Trauma Code: Heroes on Call. Photo: Netflix

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Ju Ji-hoon stars as an impossibly good surgeon who is handsome, fearless and an all-round hero in this Netflix drama


Ju Ji-hoon stars as an impossibly good surgeon who is handsome, fearless and an all-round hero in this Netflix drama.


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Review | The Trauma Code: Heroes on Call review – Ju Ji-hoon cuts dashing figure in Netflix K-drama

Ju Ji-hoon stars as an impossibly good surgeon who is handsome, fearless and an all-round hero in this Netflix drama