Director Yu Hyun-mok deliberately avoided the lure of melodrama despite its popularity during the 1950s and 1960s in favor of realist themes and literary subjects. Set in the years following the Korean War, the film dramatizes post-war anxiety and pessimism by focusing on a North Korean family relocated to the South that cannot make ends meet. One of the sons tries to succeed by pushing the boundaries of the law while his sister prostitutes herself for American GIs. Recalling the visual style of both German Expressionism and Italian Neorealism, the film finds great strength in its honest representation of life in post-colonial Seoul.