That may sound like a criticism, but in point of fact it’s quite the opposite, thanks to the reasons that keep Kim’s prized hands busy elsewhere.

The Doldam Trauma Centre is a significant new venture that requires a lot of funding and to secure that funding, a number of precious hands need to be attached to it, not just Kim’s.

This prompts hospital director Park Min-guk (Kim Joo-hun), with Kim’s blessing, to scout the brilliant surgeon Cha Jin-man (The World of the Married’s Lee Gyoung-young).

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Ensuring some drama at every turn, Jin-man happens to be Kim’s old rival. They both acknowledge the other’s surgical prowess, but they are starkly opposed when it comes to their philosophies as doctors.

Jin-man is strictly by-the-book while Kim operates with his gut – he is to the operating theatre what Tom Cruise’s Maverick is to the skies. Kim likes to wax lyrical about levels that can’t be reached without going crazy, a process that he dubs “romance”.

Not only that, Jin-man is also the father of Kim’s protégé Cha Eun-jae (Lee Sung-kyung), who is dating fellow Doldam surgery star Seo Woo-jin (Ahn Hyo-seop), a relationship that Jin-man takes a dim view of.

After being courted for the job, Jin-man drives a hard bargain. He agrees to become the head doctor of the Trauma Centre, but only if Master Kim isn’t part of it. Kim agrees and thereby stays behind in Doldam’s next-door ER wing. Jin-man also gets to choose who will join his team – will Woo-jin make the cut?

The other thing keeping Kim’s hands busy are the daring off-site operations he performs during Dr. Romantic’s frequent and thrilling action detours.

Season three kicks off with one aboard a boat filled with North Korean defectors, but the high point of the season is when Doldam’s doctors become heroic emergency response paramedics in episodes 9 and 10, when an old multi-floor commerce building collapses near them.

The spectacular incident is chock-full of gripping drama, but it also walks a very fine line as it deliberately references several Korean tragedies in a bid to (successfully) provoke an emotional response.

The collapse itself brings to mind several painful memories of structural catastrophes, an enduring problem that points to South Korea’s rapid growth and corner-cutting management style, such as the Sampoong Department Store Collapse of 1995.

Episode 9 also begins with Doctor Jung In-soo (Yoon Na-moo) leading a training class in CPR and features Doldam doctors making difficult decisions about whether to perform CPR on several teenagers at the site of the collapse.

These images conjure up harrowing parallels with the images that were beamed around the world from Halloween 2022’s Itaewon crowd crush in Central Seoul – those of dozens of paramedics desperately performing CPR on dozens of already-dead youths.

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Leaving aside the thorny question of how manipulative this incident is, the sequences that chronicle it find Dr. Romantic firing on all cylinders.

The death race between the critical injuries of victims and the medical expertise of the Doldam doctors is thrilling enough, but when Woo-jin and nurse Eun-tak (Kim Min-jae) become trapped in the rubble as well, the show adds an agonising emotional layer that only ratchets up the tension further.

While Dr. Romantic’s habit of tossing its medical professional protagonists right into the heart of the action is undoubtedly one of its strong points, it’s also a gambit that has occasionally run the risk of repeating itself this season.

At the beginning of the season Woo-jin had to face off with a deranged North Korean hell-bent on killing one of his countrymen in the same hospital. Halfway through the season, he has to do the same thing, this time with a deranged soldier seeking to finish off his comrades, who are already lying in Doldam’s Trauma Centre with gunshot wounds.

Unlike other hit medical dramas, such as Hospital Playlist, Dr. Romantic spends a lot more time in operating theatres and is considerably gorier. Scalpels, sliced torsos and gushing arterial spray are routine features in every episode.

It also has a more grounded and balanced approach regarding the interplay between its lead characters. The doctors at Doldam are all attractive and ultimately heroic, but they do have serious flaws that aren’t glossed over.

This is especially evident in the tense senior-junior relationship between Woo-jin and the young doctor Jang Dong-hwa (Lee Sin-young), which goes through serious growing pains. Some of these have a real-life impact on their patients, such as a ski jumper who almost loses his leg.

Going into the final stretch, the issues around the official opening of the Doldam Trauma Centre appear set to be resolved, but a new problem is brewing: Master Kim’s hands appear to be deteriorating, a fact that hasn’t escaped the notice of Jin-man.

The show has also teased the return of one of its season one protagonists: Kang Dong-joo, the doctor played by Yoo Yeon-seok, incidentally one of the leads of Hospital Playlist.

Dr. Romantic season 3 is streaming on Disney+.

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