Doctor X Ratings Drop to 15.6% as The Perfect Lie Premieres
SBS's "Doctor X: Mafia in White" has now lost viewers two episodes in a row, slipping to a 15.6 percent nationwide household rating on Saturday, Oct. 31, as MBC's "The Perfect Lie" opened against it.
The Korea Herald, citing Nielsen Korea, reported that the eighth episode fell from 16.5 percent for the Friday episode and from the series high of 19.5 percent set by episode six on Oct. 24. That is a drop of 3.9 percentage points from the peak. The Herald still called the show one of the second half's breakout K-dramas, and it noted that the series opened at the highest rating of any Korean miniseries released this year.
Kim Ji-won stars as Gye Soo-jung, a surgeon who takes on corrupt power structures inside hospital administration. Outside Korea the show has held up better. Netflix's Tudum chart placed it second on the global non-English TV list for the last full week of October, after two straight weeks at No. 1, the Herald said.
The domestic slide has come with controversy. In episode six, the protagonist removes a bullet that had sat in a patient's brain for 46 years. The patient had been shot during the military crackdown in Gwangju in May 1980, and the scene drew online criticism of how the show handled that history. A petition filed on the National Assembly's website asks that the drama be taken off the air and that its production be reviewed. Separately, some viewers have said scenes in which a surgeon makes unilateral decisions during multispecialty operations do not follow real hospital protocols. The Herald did not report any response from SBS in its Nov. 2 story, and the petition is a citizen filing, not a government decision.
The timing matters because a new competitor arrived on Oct. 30. "The Perfect Lie" reunites Yoo Yeon-seok and Seo Hyeon-jin, who starred together in the 2016 hit "Dr. Romantic," in a psychological thriller built around lies and suspicion. The pair appeared at a press conference in Seoul on Wednesday, Oct. 28, to promote it. Soompi reported that the premiere averaged 1.9 percent nationwide, according to Nielsen Korea, and that "Doctor X" remained No. 1 in its slot. The report gave no ratings for the second episode or Seoul-only figures, and the figure was not matched by a second outlet in this check.
So the two shows are not yet in a close race. Doctor X sits more than 13 points ahead of the newcomer, even after falling to its lowest rating of the run. Dramas of this kind often change ground in the second half of a series, and a thriller with a pair this well known could grow once word spreads, but the first numbers give it a long way to climb.
Both series run on the weekend, which means the next round of Nielsen numbers will show whether Doctor X's decline continues and whether The Perfect Lie finds an audience of its own.
