About D.P.
D.P. (short for Deserter Pursuit) is a South Korean drama that follows An Jun-ho, a quiet young man drafted into mandatory military service who is reassigned to a special unit of the military police tasked with finding and returning soldiers who have gone absent without leave. Paired with the unpredictable and street-smart Han Ho-yeol, Jun-ho travels across the country chasing down each deserter, learning that almost every runaway has a story that explains why they ran.
Rather than treating the deserters as simple criminals, the series uses the structure of a manhunt procedural to examine the human reasons behind each disappearance, including loneliness, debt, family crises, and the pressures of life inside a rigid institution. Each case becomes a small character study, and the empathy Jun-ho develops for the people he is sent to capture gradually puts him at odds with the system he serves.
Adapted from the webtoon D.P. Dog's Day by Kim Bo-tong, the show became one of Netflix's most talked-about Korean titles for its grounded tone and its willingness to engage with difficult questions about conscription, accountability, and institutional reform. The first season premiered in 2021, and a second season, which broadens the focus to the chain of command and the consequences of cover-ups, followed in 2023.