South Korea, 1979. Han Kiju is an alcoholic novelist who has never recovered from his year long tour as a volunteer soldier in Vietnam. When he's asked to write a book about the Korean soldiers who fought in Vietnam he's battered by flashbacks that remind him of the brutality and lies that destroyed his innocence. The serialized novel brings him back in with a former soldier who served under him, PFC Pyon Chinsu, the one-time company clown driven mad by the violence of the war and who now looks to Han for some sort of emotional rescue.