Actor Park Ji-hoon, who demonstrated his acting prowess and screen presence in "The Man Who Lives With the King" — the second highest-grossing Korean film of all time with 16.84 million admissions — is now aiming for another box office success as a "mess cook." TVING original "The Mess Cook Becomes a Legend" is showing signs of becoming a hit, capturing both ratings and buzz immediately upon release. Analysts say the show has secured its distinctiveness by combining a game-style growth narrative, an emotional code conveyed through cooking, and a fresh take on the familiar setting of the military.
According to industry sources on Wednesday, "The Mess Cook Becomes a Legend," which premiered on the 12th of this month, recorded a high nationwide average rating of 7.6 percent on tvN. It also ranked first in TVING's paid subscriber contribution metric. Based on a webtoon of the same name, the series depicts Kang Sung-jae (played by Park Ji-hoon), who is assigned as a mess cook after enlisting in the military and grows through his cooking abilities and a game-style system.
The unique concept of "military + gaming + cooking," combined with comedic elements and shocking endings, signals a hit. The show stands out from existing military dramas by combining the realistic setting of the military with RPG (role-playing game)-style systems such as "skills," "affinity ratings" and "job-change quests." For example, scenes in which Kang Sung-jae uses the "affinity check" skill to view his fellow soldiers' emotions as numerical values, triggering "job-change quests," deliver the fun of actually playing a game. Comedic setups, such as the line "I spend most of my military service imagining the breakfast, lunch and dinner menus," generate non-stop laughs.
While most existing military dramas have focused on closed organizational cultures and conflict-driven narratives, this work has secured its distinctiveness through a warm story of restoring relationships through food. In particular, the scene in which Kang Sung-jae, facing the risk of being transferred to a different post, recalls the words of his late father while preparing a meal in order to remain a mess cook delivered touching emotion. The line "Delicious food made with sincerity moves people's hearts" symbolically represents the drama's central sentiment. The shocking endings of each episode are also a draw. In the first episode, the battalion commander collapses after eating Sung-jae's seaweed soup, while the second episode hints at a new incident by showing a mysterious figure collapsed on the beach, sustaining the tension.
