In 2011, Eunju Oh opens her door to greet a stranger: a young Korean American woman holding a familiar-looking knife --- a knife Eunju hasn’t seen in 30 years. In South Korea in the 1980s, young Eunju and her mother are homeless on the street. After being captured by the police, they’re sent to live within the walls of a state-sanctioned reformatory center that claims to rehabilitate the nation’s citizens but hides a darker, more violent reality. While Eunju and her mother form a tight-knit community with the other women in the kitchen, two teenage brothers, Sangchul and Youngchul, are compelled to labor in the workshops and make increasingly desperate decisions --- and all are forced down a path of survival, the repercussions of which will echo for decades to come.

When the communist-backed army from the north invades her home, 16-year-old Haemi Lee, along with her widowed mother and ailing brother, is forced to flee to a refugee camp along the coast. For a few hours each night, she escapes her family’s makeshift home and tragic circumstances with her childhood friend, Kyunghwan. Focused on finishing school, Kyunghwan doesn’t realize that his older and wealthier cousin, Jisoo, has his sights set on the beautiful and spirited Haemi --- and is determined to marry her before joining the fight. But as Haemi becomes a wife and then a mother, her decision to forsake the boy she always loved for the security of her family sets off a dramatic saga that will have profound effects for generations to come.