The film, which is based on a true story, is about an adopted son who is searching for his biological parents in South Korea. During his search he meets his real father, a condemned murderer on death row. Daniel Henney plays the lead role of James, who works as a volunteer in the United States armed forces in Korea. He asks questions of why his father is on death row and finds out things that he always wanted to know. Then he finds more and more truths unravel about his father and his life.
The release of the film inspired controversy because the family of the father's victims did not support its production. In its first week on release it topped the South Korean box office sales charts.
The adopted son on whom the story is based is Aaron Bates, a licensed insurance broker for his family's insurance brokerage, Insurance Services of America. He lives and works in Arizona and is raising two boys of his own with his wife.
The film, which is based on a true story, is about an adopted son who is searching for his biological parents in South Korea. During his search he meets his real father, a condemned murderer on death row. Daniel Henney plays the lead role of James, who works as a volunteer in the United States armed forces in Korea. He asks questions of why his father is on death row and finds out things that he always wanted to know. Then he finds more and more truths unravel about his father and his life.
The release of the film inspired controversy because the family of the father's victims did not support its production. In its first week on release it topped the South Korean box office sales charts.
The adopted son on whom the story is based is Aaron Bates, a licensed insurance broker for his family's insurance brokerage, Insurance Services of America. He lives and works in Arizona and is raising two boys of his own with his wife.
This movie consists of 5 different stories:
1. "Seaside Flower" (Director Park Kyung Hee): Eun Hye suffering from Down’s syndrome entered school earlier than others did. Friends from school make fun of her because of her slow speech. She’s always dignified and doesn't care about what they’re saying, though. She’s pretty good at playing a flute, sending a text message by cell-phone, watching movie on the computer and telling an old story. 2. "Hey, Man~" (Director Ryoo Seung Wan): Woo Shik thinks ‘man’ should be ‘manly’ in every way. What he’s talking about, with his friends at a bar just tells us how often and seriously we discriminate against others out there; sexual discrimination, racial discrimination, treating waitresses so bad, homophobia, judging people by the way they look and education back ground, etc. In the end, all of his friends left him behind and he came over to a stranger saying “you know what I mean, ‘cause you a ‘man’!”
3. "A boy with the Knapsack" (Director Chung Ji Woo): 19-year-old Hyun Lee and Jin Sun got to take refuge from North Korea. Jin Sun is always troubled with her classmates and an owner of her part-time work place cheated her. She’s all alone at home. Her silence is made out of a lack of communication with the world, which makes people think she’s deaf. Hyun Lee misses his hometown so much and buys a lot of gifts for his parents and stuff them in his knapsack just like his routine.
4. "Someone Grateful" (Director Jang Jin): There are two guys are sitting face to face in a basement; Kyung Shin who was caught from intervention in the student movement, and a police officer, Joo Joong who’s in charge of torture. The student doesn't confess what he did and who else involved in the movement and the officer keeps on torturing him. By the way, the police officer spoke out how he’s been working as an informal worker at a police office, which he must work over time without any special bonus and any insurance from work. He’s consoled by the one who he’d arrested.
5. "Jongno, Winter" (Director Kim Dong Won): It’s very early morning on December 9th, 2003. A Chinese Korean, Kim Won Seop is found out frozen to death on the street of Seoul. One year later, a director’s searching for the deed of him somewhere around the area where he died. When it was very late and freezing night, Kim Won Seop got lost on the way to a strike site that was to stop a deportation order and to amend the Korean Residents Code. He’d been looking for some help from starving and cold all night, but nobody found him.
