While the villagers are preoccupied with a harvest festival, O Gi-ho, a collaborator with the Japanese police, attempts to rape Yeong-hui.

Hyeon-gu fights Gi-ho, while Yeong-jin watches and has a vision of a couple in a desert begging a man for water.

When the man in his imagination embraces the woman rather than offering her water, Yeong-jin stabs him with a sickle, actually killing Gi-ho.

The film was a departure from the standard melodramas popular at the time because of its metaphorical resistance to Japanese colonial rule.

Lee Doo-yong's version was the first South Korean film to be publicly screened in North Korea.