General Wang-gun marches on the capitol and overthrows the usurper Ku-jin who had slain the last king of the Shilla Dynasty. Wang-gun becomes king and begins a new era in Korean History--the Koryo Dynasty.

During the Korean War, a widow living in a village in a mountainous region in the South of the Korean Peninsula that has lost most of its men to the war finds a Communist guerilla gone AWOL hiding in a bamboo grove and develops a relationship with him.

Nan-hee is slowly coerced into a life of crime by her boyfriend, Park. She is trained in assassination techniques and sent to assassinate the head of the Special Investigation Unit. However she cannot complete her mission because she suffers from pangs of conscience and a deep attraction to the investigator.