Ji Sung Left New York for a Drama That Hit 13.6% and Rescued MBC

In early 2025, an MBC drama director boarded a flight to New York. His mission: convince Ji Sung, one of South Korea's most respected actors, to lead the network's upcoming Friday-Saturday legal thriller. What followed — the pitch, Ji Sung's eventual agreement, and the drama that resulted from it — became one of the more striking success stories of Korean television's 2026 season.

That drama, The Judge Returns (판사 이한영), aired from January 2 to February 15 across 14 episodes on MBC. By the time its penultimate episode aired on February 13, it had recorded a nationwide rating of 13.6% — the highest of its run — and an instantaneous peak of 17.4%. The finale settled at 12.8%, allowing the show to close on its second-highest episode and claim the No. 1 position in the Friday primetime slot across all networks. For MBC, it was the network's highest-rated drama in well over a year.

The Network That Needed a Win

To understand what The Judge Returns meant to MBC, some context is necessary. Throughout 2025, the network struggled to crack double digits. Its best-performing drama of the year peaked at 8.3% — a number that, by the standards of broadcast television in Korea, represented a difficult stretch. The gap between MBC and its competitors on SBS and the cable channels had been widening. Audiences were watching, just not necessarily on MBC.

The decision to pursue Ji Sung for the lead role was part of a deliberate recalibration. Ji Sung had most recently appeared in JTBC's Connection (2024), where his performance as a detective navigating addiction earned considerable critical attention. Before that, he had accumulated a track record across two decades that few Korean actors could match. Landing him for MBC's flagship Friday-Saturday slot was, in the estimation of those who follow the industry, a significant coup — one that required a director flying to New York to close the deal.

The Drama and Its Central Idea

The Judge Returns operates in the fantasy-legal genre that Korean audiences have embraced across multiple recent dramas. Ji Sung plays Lee Han-young, a corrupt judge who spent his career as effectively an instrument of a powerful law firm. After his death, he regains consciousness and finds himself 10 years in the past — before the worst of his compromises took place. The drama follows his effort to undo those compromises, punish those who manipulated him, and, implicitly, answer the question the show poses from the opening episode: what does a person owe to justice when they have spent their career subverting it?

Park Hee-soon plays Kang Shin-jin, the drama's primary antagonist — a senior judge at Seoul's Central District Court whose influence over the legal system drives much of the conflict. Won Jin-ah appears as prosecutor Kim Jin-ah, and Baek Jin-hee plays Song Na-yeon, a journalist. The antagonist-protagonist dynamic between Ji Sung and Park Hee-soon gave the show much of its dramatic voltage; the finale's climax, in which Lee Han-young demands the death penalty for Kang Shin-jin in open court, drew the show's peak instantaneous rating of 17.4%.

The drama was directed by Lee Jae-jin and Park Mi-yeon, and written by Kim Gwang-min. It was produced by OH Story and Slingshot Studio in collaboration with MBC, and was based on a Naver webtoon by Lee Hae-nal. For viewers outside Korea, it aired on HBO Max in select territories.

How the Ratings Built

The series opened on January 2 with a nationwide rating of 4.3% — a modest start but a reasonable one given the competition and the post-holiday scheduling. Over the following weeks, the numbers climbed with unusual consistency. By the time the drama broke 10%, it had established itself as the clear leader in its time slot and one of the most-discussed dramas of the early year.

The drama maintained double digits throughout its final stretch, a feat that underscored the show's ability to retain viewers who had committed early and keep drawing in new ones. The average nationwide rating over 14 episodes was 9.9%, with a Seoul average of 10.4% — numbers that placed it among MBC's stronger performances of the decade. On the Friday on which its penultimate episode aired, it ranked first across all channels — cable, satellite, and broadcast — in the key 20-54 demographic.

The peak of 17.4% (instantaneous, Episode 13) came at the moment Lee Han-young confronted the show's central villain in court. For a network that had been looking for a number that big for the better part of a year, it was a meaningful result.

Ji Sung, the Cast, and the Reactions

Among the cast members who spoke after the finale, actor Kim Beom-rae, who played a supporting role, was characteristically direct: "I was confident it would do well. And I think it should have done more damage to the villains at the end." It was the kind of post-finale comment that suggested a cast that had genuinely committed to the show's moral universe.

For Ji Sung, the drama has been described by critics and viewers as another landmark in a career already filled with them. The specific achievement — taking an MBC Friday-Saturday drama and turning it into the network's most-watched series in over a year — required managing both the genre expectations of a fantasy thriller and the emotional demands of a character who carries enormous guilt. Ji Sung's performance did both.

The director who flew to New York gave a post-finale interview in which he reflected on what the show had managed to accomplish. "Last year, MBC struggled to get into double digits," he said. "The best we had was 8.3%. I thought if we could build something on the premise of this webtoon, with the right actor at the center, we had a chance to change that." The conversation about whether 10% was achievable, he added, was already over by the fourth episode.

What It Means for the Network and the Genre

In the broader context of Korean television, The Judge Returns arrived as one of several legal-fantasy dramas to prove the genre's staying power with mainstream audiences. The formula — an authority figure who has failed, given a second chance to confront the systems that corrupted them — seems to resonate consistently with viewers who find satisfaction in watching institutional wrongdoing face consequences onscreen.

For MBC specifically, the drama's performance offered a data point in an ongoing argument about what the network needs to compete. A strong webtoon source, a cast anchored by a proven lead, and a story that gave audiences a reason to return every week were, in this case, sufficient. Whether the lesson translates to subsequent productions will depend on execution — but the argument that MBC is incapable of producing Friday-Saturday hits has at least been addressed.

The drama's final episode aired February 15. Its ratings held. Ji Sung's Lee Han-young delivered the verdict, the instantaneous number peaked at a moment millions of people appeared to be watching simultaneously, and the network logged its best number in over a year. The director's flight to New York had paid off.