The film was based on the Hong Gildong jeon, an anonymous Korean novel about a Robin Hood-like bandit.

[3] In Joseon-era Korea, Hong Kil-dong is born in Hanseong (modern Seoul) as the illegitimate son of a nobleman.

Hong goes on to train with the monk and defend the oppressed villagers, later fighting an invasion by Japanese ninjas.

It received a wide release in the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc, and was very popular in Poland and Bulgaria.

[4][6] Simon Fowler of The Guardian wrote that "With heaped spoonfuls of Shaw Brothers-inspired kung fu, the film is unlike the entire pantheon of North Korean cinema that had gone before it.