Actor Joo Ji-hoon has succeeded in achieving global box office success during the holiday season with his leading roles in global OTT (online video service) works. Following the success of Disney+‘s ‘The Lighting Store’, which was released in December last year, he killed two birds with one stone with Netflix’s ‘Trauma Center’, which was unveiled ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday, not only achieving box office success but also acclaim.

According to Netflix, ‘Trauma Center’, which was released on the 24th, recorded 32.6 million hours of cumulative viewing and 4.7 million cumulative views, ranking 3rd in the global weekly (20th-26th) cumulative viewership rankings in the non-English language category. This is an achievement made in just 3 days since its release on Friday, and it ranked 7th overall, including English-language content.

On the global OTT content ranking platform FlixPatrol, it ranked 6th on the daily chart as soon as it was released, and continued to rise in the rankings, and on the 29th, it surpassed Season 2 of ‘Squid Game’ and showed its strength by rising to 2nd overall.
It received passing marks not only in quantitative performance but also in qualitative performance such as viewer evaluations. It is leading to favorable reviews for completely excluding the shortcomings of K-medical dramas such as sweet potato development and adding romance, and focusing on a refreshing story suitable for the new genre of ‘medical action drama’, and is recording a high score of 8.5 points (out of 10) on IMDb, the world‘s largest movie and drama database.

In particular, at the center of these favorable reviews is Joo Ji-hoon’s passionate performance, who has returned to Netflix after a long time following ‘Kingdom’, which is evaluated as the ‘founding father’ of Netflix Korea. Joo Ji-hoon plays the role of genius surgeon Baek Kang-hyeok, and has earned the nickname ‘Cider Doctor Hero’ from viewers for his confidence and extraordinary nature that do not hide his genius, and his dignified attitude that does not bow down to power. The bromance between him and Choo Young-woo, who plays Yang Jae-won, the ‘No. 1 Disciple’, is also a point of interest.

With this, Joo Ji-hoon has successfully achieved global box office success in succession following ‘The Lighting Store’, which was released on December 4th of last year, and has shown off his global ticket power.

According to Walt Disney Korea, ‘The Lighting Store’ not only achieved the highest number of viewers among Disney+ Korean original dramas released in 2024, but also recorded the second highest number of viewers among all Korean original content released since the launch of Disney+, following ‘Moving’, which caused a syndrome in 2023.


Reporter Seungmi Lee smlee@donga.com

This article is automatically translated using Google AI. If you notice any inaccuracies, please let us know at allkstar@donga.com.