Title: Byeong-Wonseon | 병원선 | Hospital Ship
Genre: Medical Drama
Episodes: 40
Broadcast Network: MBC
Broadcast Period: August 30 to November 2, 2017
Synopsis:
Song Eun Jae is a brilliant, independent and very calculating surgeon. She dreams to be the chief of the Surgery Department after her professor and mentor, Dr. Kim Do Hoon, leaves his post at Seoul Daehan Hospital. She appears cold as she needs to be strong and not be like her mother who had lost her identity of who she is after by loving too much her father who is a conman and has left them several times to fend on their own. But, best laid plans don’t normally happen the way one always envisions it to be. Her mother dies and discovered that her ambition doesn’t come first with her care for her patients. So, she chose to betray her mentor based on principle and was force to leave one of the best hospital in Seoul to work at a Hospital Ship. Here she met Dr. Kwak Hyun, an internal med doctor, who’s also undergoing certain challenges in his life, the 2 military doctors, Kim Jae Gul, a Korean Medical Doctor and Cha Joon Young, a dentist. As they all travel on the hospital ship to give service to people in the islands and places medical facilities may not be available or even affordable. In the hospital ship, Song Eun Jae discovered love, compassion and empathy not only as a doctor but as a woman.
Characters:
- Ha Ji Won as Song Eun Jae
- Kang Min Hyuk as Kwak Hyun
- Lee Seo Won as Kim Jae Gul
- Kim In Shik as Cha Joon Young
- Kwon Min Ah as Yoo Ah Rim
- Kim Kwang Gyu as Choo Won Kong
- Jung Kyung Soon as Pyo Ko Eun
- Lee Han Wie as Bang Sung Woo
- Jang Seo Won as Yang Choon Ho
- Song Ji Ho (송지호) as Kang Jung Ho
- Cha Hwa Yun as Oh Hye Jung
- Jung In Ki as Kwak Sung
- Nam Ki Ae as Lee Soo Kyung
- Jung Won Joong as Kim Soo Kwon
- Park Joon Geum as Han Hee Sook
- Wang Ji Won as Choi Young Eun
- Kim Sun Young as Oh Mi Jung
- Jun Noh Min as Kim Do Hoon
- Park Tae Sung (박태성) as Kang Yong Soo
- Park Sun Ho as Kim Jae Hwan
- Jo Hyun Jae as Jang Sung Ho
My Review:
I waited for this K-Drama to finish broadcasting before I started watching it because I really hate to wait for the next episode week after week. And, of course, I watched it because of Ha Ji Won, one of my all time korean actress. With Hospital Ship she went back to what she’s really good at, which is to portray characters that her fans love her to play including myself, a strong and independent woman capable of standing on her own and be able to achieve her goals. It was 40 episodes but it plays 30-minutes per episode. It seems this style is becoming to be a fad for K-Dramas and for special actors I love to watch, I do make exceptions to my rule for watching 20, or at the most, 25 episodes limit. These type of 40 episodes with 30 mins. per episode if one do total it, it is indeed a 20-episode k-drama in terms of time spent which in actuality didn’t break my rule.
So, What do I Like About this K-Drama?
1) I always complain about how K-Dramas don’t particularly care in the details particularly when they’re doing a procedural drama either police or medical. More often than not, as a person in the medical field, I get pissed off when the director treats these details as an insignificant part of the drama and just think that the people watching are majorly non-medical people and will just accept whatever they see as true as anyway they probably won’t notice nor care. Well, for me, I care and it is simply wrong especially if the genre is about it. As I’ve often said, I review k-dramas base on entertainment value it brings and not so much on the technical aspect but I do take exception when this part is taken for granted. However, I must say Hospital Ship has done well on this part. It is well researched and delivered even to the most insignificant actions like the manner of Ha Ji-Won doing the simplest scene of holding the syringe in aspiration or getting a local anesthesia from the bottle to the syringe. It was done like a real doctor and in that scenario. And, honestly, even if there’s a mistake of 1 or 2 scenes in diagnosis or handling, mostly I didn’t mind. Having said that, though, I may have bit gripe with the director and writer/s towards the story in the ending but all in all the actors really made an effort to make you feel that they do care enough to deliver a genre that often fail to show the way it should be.
(2) Ha Ji-Won, as usual, is brilliant and effective in delivering a strong character in the likes of Dr. Song Eun Jae. Moreover, I do applaud all the rest of the casts for doing the same.
(3) What I always love about k-dramas is how they can present boring procedural themes into something exciting by putting emphasis on the human elements which becomes the heart of the story. They are able to present back stories of the characters whether the lead or not to make you care about what happens to them. Hospital Ship was even successful of combining a dramatic scenario with certain touch of humor like when the philandering boyfriend of one of the nurses was brought to the hospital ship because his penis got into a situation while he was being unfaithful with his girlfriend’s best friend. There are also a lot of heartwarming scenes for each medical cases that made the 40 episodes never boring to watch.
(4) I like that the stories are focus on different relationships and how life’s complications suddenly become really simple when the person we love is near death or sick.
(5) I appreciate that the characters remain true to themselves and provide consistency to the story. The supporting casts and the side stories made it better than lessens its value as a quality k-drama in a medical genre.
What I do Not Like About this K-Drama?
As whole this k-drama is one of the best if not the best I’ve seen that portrayed a medical genre in terms of delivering the technical aspect of doing treatments and surgeries, however, the ending kind of damaged its truthfulness for me. I can understand that everyone likes happy endings but they shouldn’t have used osteosarcoma as a disease to create a twist. That type of cancer is something I know so well because I was misdiagnosed with it. Thus, I know by heart and experience that chances looking like that especially if it already spread in the lungs and after chemotherapy is next to impossible. They shouldn’t have exaggerated the diagnosis so that at least it makes it feasible for the character to survive it. That’s my biggest complaint because the director and the writer should have stayed true to the medical consistency of the way they’ve shown this k-drama rather than chose to appease the audience that the character will look as healthy without a single hair gone after going through such type of cancer. And, surgery can’t do a damn thing if it already spread. Wish the twist of the ending didn’t really happen but, oh well, it can probably fool majority who’ve watched it. Having said that, I still appreciated that the majority of it, they painstakingly made a good medical drama.
Would I recommend this K-Drama? Yes
My Rating to this Drama
( See My Rating System: ) 4/5 Stars
OST:
01. Let It Go, Let It Be – Rainz
02. Strange Day – Ma Eun Jin of Playback
03. Strange Day (Acoustic Version) – Ma Eun Jin of Playback
04. Touch Of Love – Yang Da Il
05. I Feel Love – So Yun of Laboum
06. Stain – Cha Hee of Melody Day
07. Stain (Ballade Version) – Cha Hee of Melody Day
08. Let It Go, Let It Be (Instrumental) – Rainz
09. Strange Day (Instrumental) – Ma Eun Jin of Playback
10. Touch Of Love (Instrumental) – Yang Da Il
11. I Feel Love (Instrumental) – So Yun of Laboum
12. Stain (Instrumental) – Cha Hee of Melody Day
13. Strange Day (Guitar Version) – Various Artists
14. Strange Day (Piano Version) – Various Artists
15. Strange Day (Bossa Version) – Various Artists
16. Strange Day (Slow Guitar Version) – Various Artists
17. Strange Day (Slow Piano Version) – Various Artists
18. After The Rain – Various Artists
19. Memories – Various Artists
20. Seaside In Autumn – Various Artists
21. Warm Gaze – Various Artists
22. Voyage – Various Artists
23. Lean On Your Shoulder – Various Artists