 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 contact 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.