Patriotic university student Youngwoo and his friends, led by their teacher Lee Sung, along with a British friend bid farewell to their families and become freedom fighters in Manchuria fighting against the Japanese occupation around the Tumen River.
The films depicts a man Cheolho, who lives a hard life together with his war veteran younger brother Yeongho, his pregnant wife, and his mother suffering from Posttraumatic stress disorder constantly screaming "Let's get out of here!", due to the aftermath of the Korean War. Cheolho suffers from a toothache but refuses to go to the dentist, despite his brother urging that keeping the toothache is a much worse problem than paying the dentist. Yeongho befriends an actress, Miri. Miri aims to help Yeongho get a job by making him an actor in a film project. While reading his lines for the film's script, Yeongho realizes that his character is being judged for his wounded appearance and he was chosen for the scars he received from the Korean War. Choosing dignity over a rare chance to earn money, Yeongho quits the film. Myeongsuk, Cheolho's sister, is a former nurse who is now a prostitute for American soldiers.
The film is a domestic horror thriller telling of a family's destruction by the introduction of a sexually predatory femme fatale into the household. A piano composer has just moved into a two-story house with his wife and two children. When his pregnant wife becomes exhausted from working at a sewing machine to support the family, the composer hires a housemaid to help with the work around the house. The new housemaid behaves strangely, catching rats with her hands, spying on the composer, seducing him and eventually becoming pregnant by him.
A young man comes to Seoul from the country in search of his older brother, who turns out to be making a living with a group of thieves who boost goods from a U.S. Army base and sell them on the black market. Both brothers become romantically involved with the same prostitute.