Dr. Romantic 3 Episode 9 Recap & Review

Dr. Romantic 3 is a Korean drama series broadcasted by SBS starting from April 28, 2023. It is directed by Liu Renzhi, who also directed “Doctor Romanctic”, “Dr. Romantic S2”, and written by Kang Yin-kyung, who wrote for “Dr. Romantic 3 Romanctic”, “Doctor Romantic S2”, and “Fox Bride Star”. The story revolves around Kim Sabu, a genius doctor working at Doldham Hospital in a local city, and his interactions with passionate young doctors. In the Asia-Pacific region, it will be exclusively available on Disney+ every Friday and Saturday at 22:30 starting from April 28th. ( Source: Wikipedia)

Most of the cast members in Dr. Romantic Season 3 are returning from Season 2, and the storyline continues where Season 2 left off. If you haven’t watched previous seasons yet but don’t have enough time to catch up on everything before watching this season, we recommend at least starting with Season 2 so that you can follow along more coherently~ However, there may be some connections between certain characters in Episode Four of Dr. Romantic Season Three and an incident in Season One; therefore if possible it would be better to watch all three seasons!

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Dr. Romantic 3 Episode 9 Recap

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🩸A building that has already been warned of collapse is quietly cracking. Meanwhile, Seo Woo-Jin and Cha Eun-Jae were supposed to meet with Cha Jin-Man, but it was Cha Eun-Jae’s mother who came to the appointment instead. She complained that Eun-Jae’s hospital is cursed. Continuing from Episode 8 of Dr. Romantic S3,Cha Jin-Man went to court to handle Kim Ha-Nul’s lawsuit. However, Cha Eun-Jae wanted to leave directly so as not to embarrass Seo Woo-Jin, but Seo Woo-Jin showed a different attitude than three years ago. His warmth now caught Cha Eun-Jae’s mother off guard.

Outside the courtroom, Ko Kyung-Sook complained to Park Min-Guk that there was no need for an emergency center for trauma patients and planned to use her son’s death in court as evidence that such centers do not need budget or existence – this was her true purpose in filing the lawsuit. Cha Jin-Man believed that reconciliation is impossible at this point and he must personally appear in court.

Everyone received news of the collapse of an old building accident; coincidentally Seo Woo-jin and Cha Eun-jae were not far from the site when it happened. They both left immediately leaving behind Cha Eun-jae’s mother and rushed over there while Jung In-soo had chosen to go back supporting surgery at the hospital despite needing urgently going back into court.

🩸However, on-site both Seo Woo-jin and Han Jae-kwon were shocked when they encountered their first patient who had stopped breathing already upon arrival; however according disaster relief principles only those who can be saved should be treated first so unfortunately they had no choice but abandon him/her temporarily . At the same time ,Seo Woo-jin took full command of the rescue team and began to provide medical assistance. In the trauma hospital, Kim Sabu initially gave all orders to everyone while Park Min-Guk told him that even Ko Kyung-Sook was trapped in the collapsed building and her situation was worse than expected.

Cha Eun-Jae found a severely injured patient who had fallen into a coma, but she was called back to support thoracic surgery at the hospital. Meanwhile, Seo Woo-jin faced an unconscious patient whom he could not intubate; eventually this patient lost his pulse and Seo Woo-jin had no choice but declare him dead. At the same time, there were a group of students and teachers trapped underground in the collapsed building. Seo Woo-jin judged that they couldn’t wait for rescue teams so he decided to go inside alone.

🩸Of course, Seo Woo-jin violated the principle of prioritizing safety for emergency responders on-site; however after seeing someone die before his eyes without being able to save them ,he believed that if he gave up then people would die too . Therefore Nurse Eun-Tak also decided to enter with him into building together . Jang Dong-Hwa discovered this later and quickly reported it to Kim Sabu who became very angry yet worried about their safety. On phone call with Seo Woo-Jin ,Seo explained that victim is actually teacher who got hurt trying save students ;if it were Kim Sabu himself he would have done exactly same thing .

This incident was also heard by Cha Eun-Jae, but she put aside her personal emotions calmly continued working on two patients requiring urgent surgery. Meanwhile in court Cha Jin-Man was ready but still hadn’t seen Ko Kyung-Sook attending～

🩸At this time,Ko Kyung-sook contacted outside world via mobile phone only find out next person beside her -the boss lady- was more severely injured. However, rescue workers asked Ko Kyung-Sook to find a cloth to stop the bleeding because everyone was still rescuing students. This decision was criticized by bureaucrats for not saving Ko Kyung-Sook. At this moment, the building collapsed again; not only Seo Woo-jin, Nurse Eun-Tak and patients were still inside but even Ko Kyung-sook found herself in an even more dangerous situation .This news reached the hospital affecting everyone’s mood especially when Seo Woo-Jin’s hand got pierced by steel.

Dr. Romantic 3 Episode 9 Review

Jung In-Soo: “In a mass casualty incident, the primary goal is to minimize harm. If we want to minimize harm with limited manpower and resources, we have to make choices and focus our efforts. That means our goal is not to save those who are already dead. Our biggest goal is to provide emergency measures for other critically injured patients and prevent them from dying. In a disaster with many casualties, we don’t perform CPR; that’s the principle.” At the beginning of Dr. Romantic 3, Ko Kyung-Sook tells Park Min-Guk: “Honestly, I still don’t feel its necessity. Kim Sabu’s legacy center can already serve its purpose. Why do you need to build another trauma center?” The writer of Dr. Romantic 3 uses this episode of a building collapse accident as proof of the necessity of a trauma center, which arises unexpectedly and under unforeseeable circumstances.

At the beginning of this episode in Dr. Romantic 3, Ko Kyung-Sook unhappily says she wants to use her son’s death as evidence that the trauma center cannot save people (her son). This actually echoes Jung In-Soo’s principle concept at the beginning regarding mass casualty incidents involving all paramedics’ deaths. At that time when Kim Ha-Nul died, chaos reigned in hospitals due to more acute injuries so such choices would lead to some heartbreaking consequences.

Of course, the trauma center cannot be exempted from responsibility because Cha Jin-Man did mention “shortage of hospital staff” issue in this episode which reflects on itself if there were other doctors available at that time who could check on Kim Ha-Nul’s condition then it might have prevented tragedy (which is why when an orange alert appeared in this episode Kim Sabu had called back vacationing doctors). However Cha Jin-Man’s approach was quite selfish since Jung In-Soo went straight into hospital without caring about court but he still wanted to show Ko Kyung-Sook the consequences of her causing a shortage of staff.

However, I think the screenwriter’s intention is not to have the audience argue about who is right or wrong in the current situation, but rather to find a way to do better and give a chance for redemption. This can also make improvements more meaningful. Therefore, Doldham Hospital once again proves that its emergency capacity is insufficient and needs reinforcement from trauma centers. The collapse incident demonstrates the necessity of trauma centers. However, whether Ko Kyung-Sook can feel this way depends on how her character can be persuaded or convinced by Kim Sabu at the end. I really like the chaos created by the screenwriter in this episode.

The third season of Doctor Romantic has a characteristic of enlarging chaos and treatment scale compared with previous seasons. In episodes one and two of “Dr. Romantic 3”, I originally thought that the screenwriter might lack inspiration as some hospital cases seemed repetitive from previous seasons. However, episode nine was really good, especially when Seo Woo-Jin faced people who had experienced major disasters at hospitals; his original calmness made him completely unsure how to proceed in such chaotic situations.

I think this is also why there were many voices shouting “save me” at the scene; facing patients who had already lost their breath and heartbeat caused intense moral choices for doctors – giving up on someone’s life would cause significant guilt for anyone including doctors following principles such as “saving those you can”. Usually after large-scale disaster scenes like these, people will experience trauma because missing out on saving lives within their grasp causes great emotional impact.

I believe that’s why there were so many shots showing doctors facing death among patients in this episode; however, what impressed me most was how cleverly written it was: I initially thought that Kim Sabu’s team realized their helplessness through this event but instead they became even more determined to save others due to feeling helpless themselves! If doctors gave up on these patients, they would die. One patient had already died in Seo Woo-Jin’s hands, so he knew that he did not want to feel more guilty. Therefore, of course Seo Woo-Jin is the person who does not want to follow principles again XD.

 “Why do you still stay in this hospital when it and everyone here are so weird?” This episode slightly explored Jang Dong-Hwa’s reason for choosing Doldham Hospital. In episode four of “Dr. Romantic S3”, we all thought his character was too rebellious and incompatible with Doldham Hospital. At that time, I could vaguely feel that there must be some story behind why he was so rebellious towards hospitals; especially at the end of this episode where Jang Dong-Hwa listened to music using a cassette tape mixed by “Hyun-joo”. Who is Hyun-joo? If I’m not mistaken, she should be a junior student from season one whose incident happened 14 years ago before season one started. Calculating the time frame, it is very likely that Hyun-joo’s incident caused Jang Dong-Hwa to suffer trauma and decide to become a doctor; although their true relationship (perhaps siblings because they share the same surname) cannot be determined due to age differences now.

However, what can be known is that Hyun-joo’s incident must have been a big blow for Jang Dong-Hwa. So his view on doctors is not gratitude but rather finding fault – probably also related to Hyun-joo’s event. Especially in episode nine of “Dr. Romantic 3”, Lee Sun-Woong asked about Jang Dong-Hwa’s reason for coming to Doldham Hospital but he did not reveal the real reason behind it; only saying “just curious”. Considering how inappropriate Jang Dong-hwa seemed at first in this hospital, I think what he really wants answers for is why Hyun-joo was not saved.

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