Kim Ji Won after Queen of Tears: the road to Doctor X

02Hong Hae-in and the peak she walked away from

In Queen of Tears, she played Hong Hae-in, a third-generation chaebol heiress and the CEO of Queens Department Store, with Kim Soo-hyun as her husband. The drama aired on tvN from March to April 2024. Its final episode reached 24.9 percent nationwide, and at the time it became the highest-rated series in tvN's history. On Netflix, it stayed on the global top ten for non-English TV for more than three months.

She has said she took the part because Hae-in was not simple: cold on the outside, delicate underneath. It was also the most glamorous role of her career, full of designer clothes, long hair and a life of luxury.

After a peak like that, the easy move is to stay in the same lane.

She did not, and the reason lies in the road that led her there.

03The road that led to the top

That road also began with a rich girl. In The Heirs, on SBS in 2013, she played Yoo Rachel, who was proud and sharp-tongued. The role won her the New Star Award at the SBS Drama Awards.

In 2016 came Descendants of the Sun on KBS, where she played army doctor Yoon Myung-joo. It was a supporting part, yet it brought her Best New Actress and an Excellence Award at the KBS Drama Awards. It also means Doctor X is not her first doctor: she had already played one ten years earlier.

A year later, Fight for My Way gave her a first leading role, opposite Park Seo-joon. She played Choi Ae-ra, who works at a department store information desk but dreams of becoming an announcer. Ae-ra was loud, funny and ordinary, the opposite of Rachel. The role won her an Excellence Award, a Popularity Award and Best Couple with Park Seo-joon at the KBS Drama Awards.

Then, in 2022, she went quiet in JTBC's My Liberation Notes. She played Yeom Mi-jeong, the youngest of three siblings and a contract worker in a credit card company's design department. The role earned her a Best Actress nomination at the Baeksang Arts Awards in 2023.

Every time a role worked, the next one went in another direction.

Queen of Tears was the latest turn on that road, and its biggest hit. In that light, the two-year pause reads less like a break than like the next turn of the same pattern.

04Doctor X: a surgeon who leaves at six

Doctor X: Mafia in White is a 12-episode SBS drama, adapted from the Japanese series Doctor-X: Surgeon Michiko Daimon. It premiered on October 9, 2026, and it also streams on Netflix.

She plays Gye Su-jeong, a freelance surgeon from a medical staffing agency, sent to a hospital that is short of surgeons. She is paid per operation, and she leaves work at six in the evening. Inside the hospital, she challenges the director's decisions and treats the critically ill patients.

Next to Queen of Tears, it is almost a reversal: from a department store CEO to a doctor who clocks out at six.

05The glamour stripped away

Asked about her two years away, she said it was a time of preparing which side of herself to show next. She called Doctor X a wonderful project, and said the cast joining the director made her want to be part of it.

The preparation was physical as well. For the role, she practiced speaking in a lower voice and kept her makeup to a minimum, and her long hair was cut into a chin-length bob. Her reasoning was simple: her last drama had many glamorous looks, so this time she wanted to strip away as much as possible.

Carrying a drama alone put pressure on her, she admitted, but she said it gave her even more courage.

06The audience followed her

The first episode drew 11.4 percent nationwide, the highest premiere of any miniseries in Korea in 2026. The ratings kept rising, and the fourth episode reached 18.5 percent, with a peak of 20.8 percent.

On Netflix, it was number one on the global chart for non-English TV two weeks in a row. In the week of October 12 to 18, it counted 7.1 million views and reached the top ten in 48 countries. It was number one in seven countries that week, including South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam and Singapore. In Korea, Good Data Corporation's buzz ranking put Doctor X first among dramas and Kim Ji Won first among actors.

The short hair, the lower voice and the solo lead did not cost her the audience.

07She rarely walks the same road twice

She waited because repeating Hong Hae-in would have been the safe choice, and she rarely walks the same road twice. Doctor X let her strip the glamour away and start again with a different face.

Doctor X: Mafia in White airs on SBS and streams on Netflix. Which role is your favorite: Hong Hae-in or Gye Su-jeong?