Hwa Seong Films Co., Ltd

A young sailor arrives in Busan Harbour; an outrageous-looking, woolly bear of a man appears in downtown Busan with a shotgun over one shoulder, a heavy knapsack thrown over the other; a tough-looking young woman joins her friend in robbing a naïve fat man in a suit. The strands of character and story will slowly converge, well after the audience, tuned to the coincidences and mistaken identities of melodrama, has recognised that these three have a shared history and are fated to meet and reconcile.

Jeom-rye works as a sharecropper to make a living for her good-for-nothing husband and her son Yong. But the village men are always trying to seduce her. When she rebuffs her landlord's advances, she is wrongly accused by his wife and is forced to leave. Sam-su, the servant who is smitten with her, offers to lend her husband, Deok-hi, money for her affections. Deok-hi tries to sell her off to Sam-su but Jeom-rye gets him arrested for trafficking humans. Sam-su realizes Jeom-rye's sincerity and drops the charges and Deok-hi repents his ways only too late. He dies of an illness. When her son Yong dies from indigestion after eating rice cakes, she goes off the edge.

Mr. Park raises his children by repairing charcoal pits. Although ignorant and stubborn, Mr. Park has a good heart. He is displeased, however, with his eldest daughter, Yong-sun (Jo Mi-ryeong), because of her close relationship with Jae-cheon (Hwang hae), who is a scamp in his eyes. He is also unsatisfied with his second daughter, Myeong-sun (Eom Aeng-ran), for liking Ju-sik (Bang Su-il). Only his eldest son, Yong-beom (Kim Jin-gyu), is the apple of his eye, as he approves of his son's wife, Jeom-rye (Kim Hye-jeong). When Yong-beom is sent to a foreign branch office, Mr. Park is against it at first but approves of it, as he knows what it means for his son's future. Eventually, too, he begins to approve of his two daughters' relationships.