'Doctor X: Mafia In White' Episode 11 Recap: Who Was Writing The Letters From Switzerland?

Doctor X: Mafia In White is finally coming to an end tomorrow, and as much as I’ve enjoyed the show, I don’t think I appreciate the controversies surrounding it this whole time. The show has been entertaining, to say the least, but the thing that’s made it so big is really how much trouble the show has been in with K-netizens since its start. Now the final reveal of what happened with the kids back in the day is certainly upsetting, but I’m not sure the handling of the situation in the show makes this a good payoff. In fact, I found the whole thing way too dragged out to be answered so late on the show. Still, I did enjoy it, and it kept me hooked from start to finish. So in that sense, I feel like it was a good experience overall. How did you feel about the Korean Doctor X? Do you think it will come back for a second season? Let’s get into episode 11 to learn more.

Spoiler Alert

What Does Dr. Jo Won-Jin Find Out About Her Father?

Episode 11 of Doctor X: Mafia In White, opens by highlighting the philanthropic nature of the man Kim Seung-Hyo. The reason he was called Baba by the cute little kids back in the day was because he saved a lot of them, and built a home for them. But there was a secret that nobody could’ve known about Dr. Kim, except for the kids themselves. Su-Jeong dreams about Neema and Baraka first, but then it switches to child versions of Won-Jin and Tae-Gyeong. The conversation revolves around “Playing Doctor,” and when the kids start running into the corridor, Su-Jeong wakes up. I think this scene is just meant to make us curious about what the old man did. But based on what the kids say to each other, and the drawings we end up seeing soon after, it is clear that he was molesting the children. It is almost as if that is the reason he started “helping” kids too.

Won-Jin is Seung-Hyo’s biological daughter. She grew up trusting and loving her father, but when a childhood friend of hers grew up to become a drug addict and told her that Seung-Hyo was assaulting her, Won-Jin wouldn’t believe her. She said it was Na-Gyeong’s drugs that were making her hallucinate the whole thing. Na-Gyeong ended up killing herself in front of Won-Jin, telling her that it will be a reminder to her that her father is a monster. Maybe this made Won-Jin reflect on the whole situation and actually understand the truth of what happened. To make matters worse, when Tae-Gyeong was growing up, Seung-Hyo did the same thing to him too. His parents were best friends with Seung-Hyo, and that’s why nobody found out what was going on. But, when they did, Won-Jin’s mother suggests they pay Tae-Gyeong’s parents to keep him mum about the whole thing. That’s when Won-Jin had had enough and told her mother that she was a monster too. Her mother might’ve genuinely believed that Seung-Hyo was an angel who was being tested by God in this manner. Apparently, all Won-Jin should’ve been happy about was how her father didn’t hurt her, or rather, “get tempted” by her. That’s why Won-Jin is now Dr. Jo and not Dr. Kim, because she’s abandoned her family. 

When Su-Jeong comes back home in the middle of the night, soaked to her bones, Miss Jang starts fussing over her and tells her to immediately get in the shower and get changed. Rather than doing that, Su-Jeong asks her why she took her in all those years ago. When Miss Jang realizes she’s being serious, she says that Su-Jeong’s own mother once took Miss Jang in when she had nowhere to go even though they weren’t real sisters, and when asked why she did so, had responded that just looking at Miss Jang made her want to give her a warm bath, a hot meal, and a toasty bed. Years later, when Miss Jang showed up late to her sister’s funeral, she saw Su-Jeong there, all on her lonesome, and she experienced that exact same feeling. So she listened to it, bringing Su-Jeong home and giving her a warm bath, a hot meal, and a toasty bed.

Taking all this in, Su-Jeong says she felt the same way back in the day about all the kids, including Neema and Baraka. We see her take the letter from Switzerland and put it into a drawer in her room, which is filled with a bunch of other letters from Switzerland. Eventually, we find out that the person sending all these letters is Neema. Back in the day, Neema was the sweetest young girl in the center where all these rescued orphan kids were housed, which was run by Dr. Kim Seung-Ho, aka “Baba.” She was there with her older brother, Baraka, and they both loved Su-Jeong, who worked there as a doctor alongside Miss Jang. Though Baba left Neema alone, Baraka was a frequent victim of his “playing doctor” game, and it seemed the reason he never told anyone about it was to protect Neema, who we can imagine Baba must have threatened.

Baraka tries everything he can to find a way to get his sister and himself out of there and transferred to a different facility, but when he runs out of options, he decides to take the ultimate step. Somehow, he gets his hands on a lighter, and then he confronts Baba in the middle of the night in the clinic, which he’s soaked with gasoline. Even at this stage, Baba doesn’t promise to stop doing what he does, and instead turns towards Neema to start approaching her. This is a step too far, and Baraka decides to make the place go up in flames. Meanwhile, Su-Jeong had gone looking for Baraka to gift him a pair of shoes, but she finds his and Neema’s room empty. When she goes into Baba’s room, she’s horrified by the album of child exploitation photography she finds, as well as a bundle of children’s underwear in his trunk.

When she runs to the clinic looking for Baraka and Neema, the building blows up, and Su-Jeong rushes in, rescues Neema, but looking for Baraka. Eventually, she finds him and Baba next to each other, and it’s evident Baba used the young boy to shield himself from the blast. When she’s trying to carry Baraka out of there, Baba reaches up and stabs her in the leg with a pair of surgical scissors, trying to stop her from getting out too. Sadly, Baraka doesn’t make it, but Baba does, although with bad scarring on his face from the fire. In the aftermath, Su-Jeong uses the help of Mi-Gyeong to have Neema placed with a foster family, where she ends up settling in quite nicely. After this, Su-Jeong ends up letting herself go, not even eating because she feels like she doesn’t deserve it, since her surgery skills are the reason a monster like Seung-Hyo managed to go on to prey on more kids. In the background, we see that Seung-Hyo has a dedicated team who showed up at the site to ensure there remained no evidence that he had done anything wrong, including removing the trunk full of children’s underwear and the album full of pictures of kids. Guess Su-Jeong’s eating in surplus now is a direct repercussion of that time. 

It took receiving a letter from Neema for Su-Jeong to get back up and start eating and taking life seriously again, all in the memory of this wonderful girl who deserves to live in a better world than this one. And the existence of a better world needs people like Su-Jeong to work themselves to the bone to achieve it. In the present day, though, it’s clear that Seung-Hyo is an unrepentant monster, as he’s brought his album full of child exploitation pictures along to the hospital, as if he had done nothing wrong. Won-Jin is the one who finds this album now, and she immediately brings it to Su-Jeong to confirm if it’s the same album she saw back in the day.

At the end of episode 11, Su-Jeong and Won-Jin bump into a panicking Tae-Gyeong, who notices the album and gets even more flustered. Apparently, he’s found out that Hyeon-A wanted to see “Baba,” and the old man had invited her to his room, making it apparent he’s still a nefarious molester. Luckily, this is a problem they don’t have to confront just yet, as Seung-Hyo has already been anaesthetized, and is being wheeled into the operating room for the transplant. Tae-Gyeong begs Su-Jeong not to do a perfect surgery for once, and to let herself fail this time. He bursts into tears, and she consoles him for once. This is a transplant surgery, and earlier in the show, Miss Jang had spoken about how there’s three lives at stake during a transplant, so I don’t think Su-Jeong would ever consider messing one up. However, Won-Jin deactivates the heart monitor and injects Seung-Hyo with a solution that will cancel the effects of anaesthesia and wake him up as he’s being cut open and operated on. The episode ends just as his eyelids flutter open, meaning we’ll have to wait till tomorrow to see just how much pain the old man is in, and what effect this will have on the careers of Su-Jeong, Tae-Gyeong, and Won-Jin.