Resident Playbook vs Hospital Playlist: how the spin-off ties into Yulje
Hospital Playlist followed five professors in their forties at Yulje Medical Center. Resident Playbook moves down the ladder to first-year residents at a Yulje branch, and the old band keeps dropping by.
Resident Playbook is set at the Jongno branch of Yulje Medical Center, the same fictional hospital network as Hospital Playlist. It comes from the same creative team, too: Shin Won-ho and Lee Woo-jung, who made Hospital Playlist and the Reply series, are the creators, with Lee Min-soo directing and Kim Song-hee writing, per Netflix. The 12 episodes aired on tvN from April 12 to May 18, 2025, and stream on Netflix.
Instead of Yulje's star surgeons, the spin-off follows first-year OB-GYN residents. Go Youn-jung leads as Oh Yi-young, a resident who works to pay off debt, alongside Shin Si-a, Kang You-seok, Han Ye-ji and Jung Jun-won.
Same hospital, different show
The two series line up like this:
- Hospital Playlist (2020–2021): Five friends from medical school, now professors at Yulje's main hospital in general surgery, pediatric surgery, cardiothoracic surgery, OB-GYN and neurosurgery. Two seasons of 12 episodes, Thursday nights. Both finales landed just over 14% nationwide.
- Resident Playbook (2025): First-year OB-GYN residents at Yulje's Jongno branch, learning the job from the bottom. One season of 12 episodes, weekend nights. It opened at 3.7% and finished at 8.1% nationwide, 8.6% in Seoul, per AsianWiki's Nielsen table.
The spin-off was supposed to arrive a year earlier. In February 2024, trainee doctors across South Korea walked out over the government's plan to expand medical school admissions, and hospitals canceled surgeries. A drama about young doctors suddenly had a real-world problem, and production paused mid-shoot, the Korea Times reported.
"This situation arose around the middle of filming."
— Shin Won-ho, creator, on the doctors' strike, at the 2025 press conference
Every Hospital Playlist doctor who stops by Jongno
The five professors all turn up, mostly in short scenes, per Soap Central's cameo guide:
- Kim Jun-wan (Jung Kyung-ho): First of the five to appear, in episode 4. He visits his friend Professor Seo Jung-min (Lee Bong-ryun) and grills Oh Yi-young.
- Ahn Jeong-won (Yoo Yeon-seok): Shows up in two brief scenes, one of them after a patient dies and leaves a young daughter behind, a nod to his program for children without guardians.
- Lee Ik-jun and Chae Song-hwa (Cho Jung-seok and Jeon Mi-do): Ik-jun arrives at the ER with his hands superglued together, and Song-hwa gets the call.
- Yang Seok-hyeong and Chu Min-ha (Kim Dae-myung and Ahn Eun-jin): They show up in the finale. Min-ha is Jongno's new OB-GYN professor, she and Seok-hyeong have married, and he helps Pyo Nam-kyung deliver a baby, per TIME.
The real handoff happens below the professors. Jang Hong-do, an intern on Hospital Playlist, is now a first-year cardiothoracic resident quizzing Um Jae-il the way Jun-wan once quizzed him. Ahn Chi-hong (Kim Jun-han) has transferred from the main branch to Jongno, and Myeong Eun-won (Kim Hye-in), another Hospital Playlist resident, is now on Jongno's OB-GYN staff in the main cast.
Even the soundtrack is shared. Mido and Falasol, the doctors' band from Hospital Playlist, recorded an OST for the spin-off.
Don't miss: What happened to Jung-hwan after Reply 1988 ended?
The finale's promotion
The finale settles who gets Jongno's open professor job. Myeong Eun-won doesn't get it. Professor Seo gives it to Chu Min-ha, who spent Hospital Playlist as a resident in Seok-hyeong's OB-GYN department.
Both candidates for Jongno's professor job were Hospital Playlist residents. The spin-off's closing move is to promote one of them, which is the whole premise of Resident Playbook in one scene.
Netflix labeled Resident Playbook a limited series, and no second season has been announced. Hospital Playlist was originally planned for three seasons, but Shin cited exhaustion after season 2 and the third has never arrived. For now, the spin-off is where Yulje's story continues, one generation down.
Previously we wrote: Resident Playbook finale ending explained: season 1 breaks records, ends with a ring — and Netflix already filed it under “limited”