 In a mining village layered in gray dust, a man posing as Kim Ki-Young finds refuge from winter and the law. Wanted by the police for an offense he commited under the authoritarian rule of the 1980 s, he conceals himself as an odd-jobber in a briquette factory. There he meets old and feeble Shim, heavily indebted Chung, Sooney s mother who must nurse her husband, and little Dae-Sik. He befriends Sung-Chul, an apparently immoral hellraiser with true maternal kindness. When Ki-Young meets Young-Sook, a lonely waitress, their lives get altered in a loving, philosophical manner.