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.

Prior to the adoption of Confucianism, it was the tradition to abandon one's parents on a mountainside if they were over 70 years of age. In the ancient kingdom of Goryeo, now modern Korea, a nobleman defies this tradition when he refuses to leave his mother to starve to death.