Detective Oh Byeong-ho investigates people related to a murder victim Yang Dal-su. He learns about former communist sympathizers Gang Man-ho, Hwang Ba-wu and Son Ji-hye, a former mistress of Dal-su’s. During the Korean War, North Korean army leader Son Seok-jin goes into a mountain with his only daughter Ji-hye and asks Gang Man-ho to take care of his daughter and treasure map. However, some North Korean sympathizers gang-rape Ji-hye, who becomes pregnant. Ji-hye and Hwang Ba-wu try to get married and find the treasure buried in Jiri Mountain, but Dal-su frames Ba-wu to make him a murder suspect. The film was completed right after the Gwangju Uprising in 1980 but this film, which captured the ordeals in the modern history of Korea, became a mess due to censorship. The controversial film was not released to the public until it was restored in 2006.
 
Lee Doo-yong is the first Korean film director to advance to the Cannes Film Festival with Spinning the Tales of Cruelty Towards Women (1983). Lee has made more than 60 films in a wide array of genres. With a talent for directing that crosses many genres, he even reaches realism in the 1990s through the lives of impoverished people who are pushed out to the fringes of a society that is driven by materialism in modern times.