How Physical: 100 Is Made: Casting, Quests and the Final-Game Dispute
피지컬: 100는 어떻게 만들어지나
Physical: 100 picked its 100 contestants from about 1,000 applicants and sends each one out by smashing a plaster cast of their own torso. This is how its quests work across two seasons, what Netflix's numbers show, and what the producer said when the Season 1 final was disputed.
Data as of
| Season | Order | Quest | Format | What contestants did | Field |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Season 1 | 1 | Quest 0: Hanging challenge | Individual | Hang from a bar above water; the 100 contestants split into two groups of 50 and were ranked by hang time. The ranking set who picked opponents next.1 | Nobody eliminated; seeding only |
| Season 1 | 2 | Quest 1: Death match | One on one | Fight for a ball for three minutes in one of two arenas, one with obstacles and one a sand pit with a pool; higher-ranked contestants chose their opponent and arena. Whoever held the ball at three minutes went through.1 | 100 → 50 |
| Season 1 | 3 | Quest 2: Moving sand | Team of five | Ten teams, each led by a contestant picked by their peers, built a bridge and carried sandbags across it in twelve minutes; the team with the least sand lost its match.1 | 50 → 25 |
| Season 1 | 4 | Quest 2.5: Revival challenge | Individual | Eliminated contestants held a rope attached to their own hanging torso cast, loaded with 40% of their body weight; the last five holding on returned.1 | 5 return (30 left) |
| Season 1 | 5 | Quest 3: Ship moving | Team of ten | Three combined teams dug oak barrels out of sand, loaded them onto a 1.5-tonne ship and dragged it across the arena on logs; the slowest team (22:15) went out.1 | 30 → 20 |
| Season 1 | 6 | Quest 4: Team delegate | Individual, by team | Each team of five sent one contestant to each of five games drawn from Greek myth (the Punishment of Atlas, Fire of Prometheus, Wings of Icarus, Tail of Ouroboros, Punishment of Sisyphus); each game's winner advanced.1 | 20 → 5 |
| Season 1 | 7 | Quest 5: The final | Individual | Four games for five survivors, one out per game: a five-way tug of war for a key, a 66-tile square flip, a shuttle run on shrinking time and an infinite rope pull. Woo Jin-yong won.1 | 5 → 1 winner |
| Season 2 | 8 | Quest 0: Treadmill run | Individual | Manual treadmills: 10 minutes for everyone, 7 more for the top 50, then 5 for the top 10; all 100 were ranked by distance.1 | Nobody eliminated; ranking only |
| Season 2 | 9 | Quest 1: Death match | One on one | As in Season 1, but with three arenas to choose from: a playground, a water arena and a UFC-style cage.1 | 100 → 50 |
| Season 2 | 10 | Quest 2: Maze race | Team of five | Ten teams of five fought over sandbags of 6 to 20 kg in a maze; the team holding two of three balance scales after 15 minutes won.1 | 50 → 25 |
| Season 2 | 11 | Quest 2.5: Pillar challenge | Individual | Contestants hugged one of ten poles for three-minute rounds; the winner picked four others to return as a sixth team.1 | 5 return |
| Season 2 | 12 | Quest 3: Mine challenge | Team of five | Four rounds with mine carts and sandbags, then monkey bars; teams scored 3, 2 and 1 points per round and the lowest total went out, with ties broken on overall time.1 | Lowest-scoring team out |
| Season 2 | 13 | Quest 4: Hi-Roller challenge | Individual, by team | Within each team, repeated heats of dragging 150 kg rollers; the slowest in every heat was eliminated until one per team remained.1 | One per team left |
| Season 2 | 14 | Quest 5: World's Strongest Man | Individual | Final four: a torso hoist, an increasingly heavy squat and a pole push, best of three; one out each round. Amotti won, beating Hong Beom-seok in the last match.1 | 4 → 1 winner |
Quests in broadcast order, from the show's Wikipedia article.1 "Field" gives contestants before → after where that article states it; Season 2's Quest 3 and Quest 4 give no head-count there, so none is shown. Season 1 had 77 men and 23 women at the start, Season 2 72 men and 28 women.1 Hong Beom-seok is named as Season 2's runner-up on the last quest's description and in Korea Times' interview with the finalists.8
Inside the production
A gym bulletin board and a pitch to Netflix
Physical: 100 (피지컬: 100) is a Netflix competition made by MBC producer Jang Ho-gi (장호기). Season 1 premiered on January 24, 2023, and the winner takes ₩300 million.1 Jang told reporters in Seoul that the idea grew from the "best body" and "man of the month" notices on his gym's bulletin board: he wanted to know who was actually the fittest.3 According to The Korea Times, he first pitched the project to Netflix in 2021 and wanted it to sit "between reality and fantasy", with deliberately unreal visuals.4
He also chose what to leave out. Jang said he cut sob stories, background information and pop-up subtitles so viewers would watch the competition, and Netflix released two episodes every Tuesday.3
Casting 100 people for a body contest
About 1,000 people applied for Season 1 and 500 were interviewed; after a physical exam and a mental-state check, 100 were chosen, Jang said. Foreign-born contestants were limited to residents of Korea who could speak Korean.3 The final field included Olympic medallists, bodybuilding champions, special-forces soldiers, trainers and fitness influencers.4
For Season 2 Netflix promised "a fresh group of 100" competing regardless of age, sex, nationality or weight class.7 Wikipedia lists the Season 2 field in five groups: warriors, national representatives, natural-body competitors, "superstars" and athletic celebrities.1 Jang said the team hadn't planned to bring back Season 1 contestants because there were so many applicants, but fans asked for Hong Beom-seok, who went out early in Season 1 and reached the Season 2 final.8
The quests, and the plaster torso
The format is a tournament: individual and team quests of strength, balance, agility, endurance, willpower and strategy, with contestants eliminated after each one.1 Each contestant has a plaster cast of their own torso on the set, and an eliminated contestant has to smash it with a sledgehammer.1 Jang compared that moment to a ceramics master breaking his own pottery, and said some contestants asked to take the broken pieces home.3 The table above lists every quest in broadcast order.
Season 1's set was about the size of two soccer fields, according to Netflix, which said Season 2's would be bigger still.7
Season 2: "Underground"
Season 2 (피지컬: 100 시즌2 – 언더그라운드) premiered on March 19, 2024.1 Jang said he spent a long time deciding between keeping Season 2 familiar and starting anew, and aimed for a balance.8 The biggest change on screen was Quest 0: instead of a hang over water, contestants ran on manual treadmills, and the treadmill ranking decided the order for the death-match picks.1 Amotti (아모띠, real name Kim Jae-hong), a CrossFit athlete and YouTuber, won the season.8
The Season 1 final: what was disputed, and the answers
After the finale, runner-up Jung Hae-min (정해민), a track cyclist per Wikipedia,1 told a local outlet that the rope-pulling final against Woo Jin-yong had been stopped and restarted, and that his request to air the rematches had been ignored.5 Korea Times reports him saying the challenge was repeated three times.6
On March 9, 2023, Jang held a press conference at MBC's headquarters in Seoul and showed raw footage. He said the first stop came after a loud noise from the rope-pulling began about one minute into the match and ran for roughly nine minutes, and that the match was stopped for the contestants' safety. After it resumed, Woo's rope twisted inside its trolley after about 26 seconds, and the production called a halt again. Jang denied that Woo had raised a hand to ask for the first stop, and said both contestants agreed how to restart.56 He denied any manipulation of the result, apologised to Woo, Jung, the other contestants and viewers for the way the stops were handled, and acknowledged viewers should have been told why the match was stopped twice.56
The accounts differ on how many times the match was restarted: Jang described two stops, Jung's account as reported by Korea Times is three repeats.6 Neither article opened for this post reports a ruling by a regulator or court. Wikipedia also records that some viewers questioned, on social media, whether contestants had used steroids; it names no one and cites no finding.1
The scorecard
Netflix's Top 10 file shows Season 1 spent six weeks on the global non-English TV list, ranking No. 1 for the weeks ending February 12 and 19, 2023; its biggest week was 45.42 million hours viewed (week ending February 19). Season 2 spent three weeks on the list: No. 1 in its first week (25.3 million hours, 6.1 million views) before slipping to No. 2 and No. 4.2 The spin-offs charted too: Physical: Asia in the list for four weeks from November 2025, and Physical 100: Italy and Physical 100: Mexico for two weeks each in September 2026.2 For how these compare with other Korean reality shows, see Korean Reality Shows in Netflix's Global Top 10.
Wikipedia lists a 2023 Asia Contents Awards & Global OTT Awards win for Best Reality & Variety and a Baeksang Arts Awards nomination for Best Entertainment Program.1
Sources
- Wikipedia, Physical: 100 (quest-by-quest descriptions, participant lists and season dates; read as raw wikitext), retrieved 2026-10-17.
- Netflix Tudum, Top 10 all-weeks global file (non-English TV rows for Physical: 100, Physical: Asia, Physical 100: Italy and Physical 100: Mexico; latest week in the file 2026-10-04), retrieved 2026-10-17.
- The Korea Herald, ‘Physical: 100’ creator Jang Ho-gi looks to find top ‘global’ physique (February 7, 2023), retrieved 2026-10-17.
- The Korea Times, Netflix survival show 'Physical 100' attracts viewers with sweat, muscle and human story (February 7, 2023), retrieved 2026-10-17.
- The Korea Herald, ‘Physical: 100’ creators deny manipulation in final match (March 9, 2023), retrieved 2026-10-17.
- The Korea Times, Creator of 'Physical 100' reveals footage to refute rigging allegations (March 9, 2023), retrieved 2026-10-17.
- About Netflix, ‘Physical: 100’ Returns for A Second Season to Find the Perfect Physique, retrieved 2026-10-17.
- The Korea Times, 'Physical 100' Season 2 creator, finalists share grueling journey of survival show (April 5, 2024), retrieved 2026-10-17.