Ji Sung and Ha Yoon-kyung's 'Apartment' Ends on a Series-High 7.7% With One of the Most Satisfying Finales of the Year

JTBC's weekend drama Apartment ended its run the way its audience always hoped it would: the bad guys in handcuffs, the stolen money returned, and Ji Sung's Park Hae-gang finally getting to exhale.

According to Nielsen Korea, the finale (Episode 12, aired August 16) pulled a 7.7% nationwide rating, up 2.3 percentage points from Episode 11's 5.4% and the highest single-episode figure the show recorded across its entire run. It also topped its timeslot for the night.

The episode centered on Park Hae-gang's public exposure of construction company CEO Lee Chung-won (played by Park Byung-eun), whose litany of abuses, including a murder confession and a trail of corruption reaching into high-powered circles, was laid out in front of prosecutors on live camera. One by one, the figures who had shielded Lee were pulled into accountability. The full sum of money that had been siphoned from the apartment residents was also restored to the building's management office, giving the finale a clean, almost ceremonial sense of resolution.

The drama then jumped three years forward. Kang Ha-ri (Ha Yoon-kyung), now a fully qualified attorney, opens a law firm called Jeongsan (roughly, 'Settlement' or 'Reckoning') alongside Park Hae-gang. Their first case together involves protecting the residents of Truevalue Apartment from breach-of-trust damages and launching a special audit, with the rest of their found-family group, the 'Intermittent Family,' by their side. It's a happy ending that earns its warmth.

Apartment sustained ratings in the 4–6% range through most of its run, solid for a Saturday-Sunday cable drama, before the finale pushed past that ceiling. The show's consistent appeal came down largely to the chemistry between Ji Sung and Ha Yoon-kyung and their ability to make the drama's crowd-pleasing justice moments land emotionally rather than just plot-mechanically. Ji Sung in particular brought a lived-in gravity to Park Hae-gang that kept the character grounded even when the story leaned into its more cathartic impulses.

For viewers who stuck with Apartment through all twelve episodes, the finale felt like a genuine payoff rather than a tidy wrap-up, which is probably the best thing a drama like this can aim for.