Beginning with the suicide of a film director, this work represents the Korean New Wave Cinema movement that focused on criticizing the Korean society in the 1980s through satire and humor. The journey taken by the characters, who lead low lives at the margins of the society, award them with a sense of liberation, however brief.

When his 'liberal' wife dies, middle aged Jang Tae-yeon stays single for the sake of his only child. When he meets Hwang Yu-young, who is in her twenties, by chance, Tae-yeon gets remarried. Yu-young becomes a young housewife enjoying a well-to-do life. However, as the days go by, she grows more disgruntled by the generation gap between her and her husband. Tae-yeon gets more caught up with his friends. When he finds out of his wife's gradual transformation into becoming a 'liberal' wife, he dies from the shock. Yu-young regrets her husband's death and she realizes too late what it means to be a housewife.

Kang-wook, a law student at Seoul National University, finds himself in a tight spot financially after losing contact with his family in North Korea. He sells his own blood at a hospital to make ends meet, and there he meets and grows close to nurse Jin-young. As Kang-wook faces financial difficulties, Ki-yong, a son of a landlord's agent, appears and tricks Kang-wook into joining left-wing activities. Ki-yong's true identity is revealed by Yoon-ae, a friend from hometown, leading to his arrest. Meanwhile, Kang-wook and Jin-young marry with the blessings of Professor Park and their friends, while Kang-wook's friend Do-hyeon struggles to hide his feelings for Jin-young. Their sweet days together come to an end with the outbreak of the Korean War, separating them. Jin-young, unable to wait for Kang-wook any longer, decides to flee the war with Do-hyeon. Kang-wook, hiding at Yoon-ae's house, is eventually arrested by Ki-yong and the leftists, who had been freed from prison.

Chun-bo and Bong-dal are members of a bandit who voluntarily claim to be Im Kek-jeong's subordinates. They didn't even know that there was a horse plaque on the clothes of the fishermen, and they were yangban and decided to play the role of a real female haenger. They perform good deeds such as scolding Tamgwan-duck for the unfair and powerless people and distributing grain to poor residents.

As the tragic war of fratricide is drawing to a close, a special agent nicknamed Dokbul, Kang Cheol-gu, is given an intelligence mission to identify and confirm the enemy's unusual movements. While on a mission, Cheol-gu infiltrates the enemy's camp alone and accidentally witnesses a bloody scene of massacre of civilians. He saves the only survivor, Hwang No-in, and is hinted that the enemy's plot is very dangerous. Cheol-gu approaches Mi-young, a People's Army nurse, to extract information, but is exposed to the enemy and escapes a crisis after a fierce battle. In the end, thanks to Cheol-gu's persistence, Mi-young realizes the illusion of the liberation struggle they are calling for, and transforms into Cheol-gu's collaborator to stop their horrific plot, germ warfare, and carries out the mission. However, the result of this tragic war is only futility. A war of illusions where more is lost than gained, and in the end, even the nickname Dokbul sheds hot tears.