Kim Mi-jo

Eight years ago, the youngest daughter, Gyeong-ju, disappeared during a school field trip to Gyeongju and never came home alive. On what would have been her birthday, her mother Ok-sil and her three daughters—Jang-ju, Young-ju, and Dong-ju—put on matching family T-shirts and set off for Gyeongju, the place where Gyeong-ju vanished, in what appears to be a family trip to honor her memory. But beneath the cheerful façade lies a deadly secret. In the trunk of their van is a bound and unconscious man zipped inside a plastic bag.

O-bok’s eldest daughter is about to get married to an educated, well-off young man, but she’s far from happy. It’s not just hot weather, hot flushes, her daughters’ materialism, her mother’s dementia, her husband’s drinking, or the impending gentrification of the food market where she sells fish – although all of that will push her to take a stand. After trying to cover it up, O-bok reveals to her daughter that she was raped by a fellow stallholder, the man organising the traders against their landlords. Increasingly furious, O-bok eschews the useless police to pursue her own justice, even if it means a physical fight.