In 1945, ten-year-old Sookan and her family live in Japanese-occupied Pyongyang. Her mother is forced to run a sock factory, and even though the conditions are tough because of the cruel police captain Narita, who inspects the production regularly and tries to confiscate other items of value, the family’s spirit is never broken, as they all hope for a better life after the war.
When they celebrate the birthday of one of the girls working in the factory, Narita shows up unexpectedly and punishes the family by cutting down a tree that was the pride of Sookan’s grandfather. Soon after, the grandfather becomes sick and dies.
With Narita putting more pressure on the family, Sookan’s mother falls very ill as well, and Sookan and her little brother Inchun have to attend a Japanese school where Sookan is in the class of Narita’s wife, who brainwashes the children so they become loyal subjects of the Japanese emperor. The women working at the sock factory are taken away to become “spirit girls” for the Japanese soldiers at the front.
Sookan’s aunt, Aunt Tiger, fears that her mother will die soon, and sends her cousin Kisa, who works as a mechanic at the factory, to a convent where her sister Theresa is a nun. However, instead of bringing Theresa he comes back with news that the Japanese have lost the war. Sookan’s mother recovers shortly after that.
However, the Koreans do not have much time to celebrate their freedom, as the Russians are quick to fill the power vacuum. Now everyone is issued special passports which the people use to record their attendance of communist meetings. Secret spies are everywhere, and everyone who does not fully support the communist ideology of Mother Russia is quickly taken away.
Sookan’s family knows that they cannot stay in the North, and plan to escape to the American-controlled South, even though they do not know the fate of Sookan’s father and her three brothers who were taken to labor camps during the war. Aunt Tiger and Kisa stay behind while Sookan, her brother Inchun, and her mother pay a guide to bring them to the border.
However, at a Russian checkpoint, Sookan’s mother is detained while the children move on with the guide, who brings them to an inn. The innkeeper warns them that their guide is actually a double agent and that they are not safe with him. Therefore, the children decide to go back to the checkpoint and look for their mother. Even though the Russian soldiers seem friendly and bring them to their superior officer, the children are interrogated and left alone without their mother.
Not knowing what to do next, they go back to the train station and survive for a couple of days on corn that they earn for babysitting a street vendor’s child. Eventually, a street sweeper gives them a special ticket which they show to the train conductor, who ushers them to the other side of the tracks. Following the instructions of the street sweeper, the children run through a cornfield, evade searchlights, cross a river, and eventually reach the barbed wire fence separating the North from the South.
With soldiers and dogs chasing them, they eventually manage to crawl through the fence and reach a red-cross camp, where their wounds are treated. The red cross staff also manage to find out the address of their father and brothers in Seoul, with whom Sookan and her brother are reunited. In the end, their mother also manages to reach them after she had served as a maid for a Russian colonel. However, Aunt Tiger, and Kisa are killed as traitors.
