[Interview] Doctor-turned-author of ‘The Trauma Code’ laments Korea’s collapsing trauma system

Korea’s trauma system was already at a breaking point. Then, a Netflix medical drama made sure everyone saw just how bad it was.

“The Trauma Code: Heroes on Call,” adapted from a web novel by ear, nose, and throat (ENT) specialist Lee Nak-joon, skyrocketed to No. 1 in 17 countries within 10 days of its release. 

To most viewers, it was a gripping drama. To Korean doctors, it was an uncomfortable reflection of reality: overcrowded ERs, patients dying while waiting for care, and hospitals debating whether to keep loss-making trauma centers open.

Korea University Guro Hospital’s Trauma Specialist Training Center, the country’s first government-approved training institution for trauma surgeons established in 2014, was on the brink of closure after the government suspended its annual 900 million won in funding ($628,000) in early February. Then, Netflix's "The Trauma Code: Heroes on Call" hit, igniting public interest. The Seoul Metropolitan Government, responding to the wave of attention, allocated 500 million won from its disaster management fund, providing just enough to keep the center afloat for now. 

Lee, who writes under the pen name Hansanleega, has seen firsthand how Korea’s trauma system is collapsing under the weight of low reimbursements, budget cuts, and a vanishing workforce of specialists. But he never set out to make a statement about healthcare policy. He just wanted to tell a good story.

Reality, however, has a way of catching up. “We expect doctors to keep going on duty and responsibility alone,” he told Korea Biomedical Review in a recent interview. “But duty wears thin. People burn out.”

Korea’s trauma network was supposed to be a triumph of public health policy. In 2014, Korea established its first regional trauma centers with government backing, promising substantial investment to improve emergency care. A decade later, those promises ring hollow. “We built trauma centers,” Lee said. “We just didn’t build a system that keeps them running.”

Government-funded trauma centers face both a staffing shortage and severe financial losses, with many losing revenue on nearly every patient they treat. Even a surgeon as superhuman as Baek Kang-hyuk, the show’s protagonist, struggles under the weight of the system. Lee sees the situation as eerily dystopian.

“Low reimbursement rates, reductions in insurance claim approvals, declining government support, and rising litigation risks have turned trauma centers into battlegrounds against an adversarial system,” he said. “In many ways, it resembles the post-apocalyptic settings commonly found in web novels.”

The story draws from real life, most notably the rescue of Captain Seok Hae-kyun, who was critically injured during a 2011 hostage rescue from Somali pirates and saved by Dr. Lee Cook-jong, the former head of Ajou University Hospital's regional trauma center. That moment, along with the author’s own harrowing experiences as a young doctor handling large-scale disaster cases, became the backbone of his story.

Baek Kang-hyuk is a surgeon so skilled he bends the limits of survival itself. Some critics call him unrealistic, but Lee insists the character had to be larger than life. “Reality is too hostile. Without someone like Baek, none of this would be survivable.”

The irony isn’t lost on him. He set out to write a hero’s story, but his fiction now mirrors the systemic collapse playing out in real-time. "The Trauma Code: Heroes on Call" doesn’t just depict overburdened trauma wards; it exposes a system held together by overworked, underpaid doctors running on borrowed time and blind idealism.

Despite the show’s success, Lee has little faith in Korea’s medical system. “We’re a developed country, but in medicine, we still hesitate to invest where it matters most,” he said. The problem isn’t just with trauma care. Lee himself recently suffered a retinal detachment and saw firsthand how underfunded essential specialties are. 

“The government refuses to fix the fundamentals of the medical system and instead expects a handful of doctors to keep making sacrifices. If this continues, Korea’s medical system will inevitably collapse. Even a sense of duty has its limits.”

Lee said his next project might be a forensic thriller or a martial arts novel. But for now, he’s watching as his fictional crisis collides with a very real one.