Seo Jung-Min: Doctor Cha character explained

Seo Jung-Min is a major supporting character in Doctor Cha. He’s the son of show protagonist Jeong-Suk and her surgeon husband Seo In-Ho.

Cha Jeong-Suk has led a difficult life being the housewife and mother to two kids for twenty years, while delivering on her thankless job consistently and relentlessly.

There is a rarity to moments where she’s lent some sort of support from other family members, when they can’t even acknowledge the struggles and efforts she has contended with in the first place.

Amidst all that, Jung-Min comes across as a uniquely compassionate member of the family, and at many instances he has gone out of his way to support his mother and empathize with her situation as she steps into a new chapter of her life.

Meanwhile, Jung-Min has struggles of his own and as he overcomes the hurdles his professional life proffers, he has plenty of personal hurdles to take care of as well, and the nature of these hurdles and how they involve both his personal and professional lives weighs on him rather severely.

Suppressed by his father

Seo Jung-Min is the eldest of the two children of Cha Jeong-Suk and Seo In-Ho. He’s the older sibling of I-Rang and currently pursues the medical profession as an intern at the Gusan University Hospital.

He’s a first-year resident at the hospital, just like his mother, and as an intern working under his own father, he’s got quite a difficult path carved out for him.

At the home, he has to suffer the suffocating and authoritative father and his words that are like lines in stone.

Seo In-Ho
Image source: JTBC

He rarely opens his mouth to speak his mind and when he does, it’s quickly suppressed by what his father deems right.

At the hospital, he often succumbs to the errors and follies that his stress results in, and he gets an earful from his father, who has no issue publically and loudly humiliating his own son, perhaps to further prove the virtue in being indifferent to your own when it comes to the work.

However, it’s not just his father who likes to give him a telling off or two every chance that arises, it’s his senior and third-year resident, Dr. Jeon So-Ra. There are many times when she scolds him loudly enough for the whole staff to hear, much to Jung-Min’s embarassment and his mother’s chagrin.

Grounded between two women

Seo Jung-Min is a compassionate, kind, and empathetic individual — qualities he takes from his mother. He also takes another trait from her, and that is not being able to keep it in his pants when it comes colleagues.

Akin to his mother succumbing to sexual tension with his father during their residency, Jung-Min is in a relationship with none other Jeon So-Ra. The two share a passionate relationship that’s kept hidden from the rest of the people at the hospital, who can’t even suspect the two of being in any such affair with the way things usually transpire between them professionally.

Meanwhile, Seo Jung-Min has his mother to care about at the hospital too. Out of practice for a whopping twenty years now, Jeong-Suk naturally needs a whole lot of guidance to get back in the game, and the only one she can turn to is her son.

Despite his heavy workload and the scoldings, Seo Jung-Min, in gestures most kind and caring, helps his mother out with the various tasks and prosedures. In the meantime, he also has to contend with the very present tension between Jeong-Suk and Jeon So-Ra.

Whereas his mother obviously takes objection to the rude manner Dr. Jeon treats her son with, the latter is ever-so-suspicious of the aged first-year resident, as she weirdly seems to invading his boyfriend’s physical space, not knowing that she’s actually his mother.


Also Read: Cha Jeong-Suk: Doctor Cha character explained

More from The Envoy Web