An oriental doctor Kim Hak-gyu is a cantankerous man who is the longest-term householder in a small village in Seoul. He often causes domestic trouble by being nasty to his wife and his children. Kim Hyeon-ok, a daughter of a young widow who runs Nahana Beauty Shop, is in love with Choi Du-yeol, an obstetrician across the street. Kim Hak-gyu has great distaste for western medicine, and at the same time, is jealous of the obstetrician. He always gets in the way of Choi Du-yeol. Kim's son, Hyeon-gu, dates Jeom-ryae, a daughter of a bar owner.

There is a poor farmer couple. The landowner, an old man, covetous of the tenant's wife, tries to seduce her and sometimes threatens her. The wife spends every night with the old man at the water mill. Her husband, hearing the news, runs to the water mill and witnesses them together. He picks up the sickle that was placed near and kills his wife. The landowner escapes and the farmer gets arrested by a Japanese policeman.

Yeong-shin, the son of Shin-ho and Hye-yeong, cannot stop thinking about his mother who left him in his father's care while she went to work in Japan. Meanwhile, his father's business is failing and he finds it increasingly difficult to support his family.

Hye-yeong reclaims her son from the boy's father and moves back to Seoul where she starts a business with money that she believes came from her brother. It is, in fact, from Shin-ho--her ex-lover. Shin-ho is driven to backruptcy because of his generousity and his wife pleads with Hye-yeong to leave Seoul for the sake of her husband's piece of mind.

Hye-yeong had no idea that her lover, Shin-ho, was a married man until Shin-ho's wife and children arrive in town. She leaves him but reappears 8 years later asking him to take responsibilty for their child.

Six-year-old Ok Hee is glad when Mr. Han comes to board at her house full of women. She plays messenger for Mr. Han and her widowed mother as they quietly fall in love, but is her support enough to guard their love?

At an ocean side village, many fishing boats never return from the high sea, and many of the women in the village assume they are widows when their husbands never return. One of them, Seongku, begins an affair with a coal worker.