Yeon-ji, a high-class call girl dealing with foreigners, takes care of her young daughter and her elderly mother. One day, she meets Jeong-gil, a Korean-Japanese, who is a man her age.

A comic book store in Garibong-dong is run by a beautiful woman better known as Madam. This store stays open late into the night, thus attracting varied types of people such as gangsters and hustlers.

Young-ae is a prostitute who obsesses over money after losing her daughter to illness. Her co-workers are jealous of her. When a prostitute named Mrs. Kangwon dies after giving a birth, Young-ae takes the baby under her care and leaves the brothel district. Although she struggles to make ends meet and provide a home for the child, the child is taken away by the authorities because she is single. She decides that her old life is the only ground for living she has and returns to it.

Distraught that he is unable to go to his parent's home for the holidays, Sang-do gets drunk and meets a beautiful woman, but he winds up spending the night in the hospital after being beaten by her boyfriend. Upon being discharged, he finds a blank check on the sidewalk and is torn between following his conscience or his greed.

Failing to enter the university of his choice, a young man is forced to enter a local college, but a series of disappointments causes him to give up his studies and begin a life of aimless travel.

A monk rapes a beautiful young woman who visits his monastery. He quits the monastery, marries the woman, and they have kids. But she despises him all the while and devotes herself to tormenting him.

Bun-nyeo, a girl in a mountain village loses her virginity to Myong-jun, the village vagabond. After both of her suitors die before they can wed Bun-nyeo, she moves to the city to work in a factory. Myong-jun persuades her to return to the village, but he is arrested for murder. As the film ends, Bun-nyeo is waiting for Myong-jun's release.