During his long absences, An-hyeop earns food, money and other goods by picking mulberry leaves (ppong in Korean) for a neighbor who raises silk-worms, and also by having sex with nearly every male in the village.

[3] Essentially a melodramic sex-farce, Lee Young-il, in his History of Korean Cinema (1988) points out that the film "depicts the agony of life under Japanese rule through sexual jests.

"[4] Min, et al. write that the film symbolically shows that, with the husband gone to work with the Independence Movement, there was not much else going on in small villages during the Japanese Occupation but sex.

[5] Mulberry was shot on location at Bossam Village, a small, traditional site in Samdong, Ulsan, which was also used in director Im Kwon-taek's Surrogate Womb (씨받이 - Ssibaji) (1986), a film which helped to bring international attention to the South Korean cinema.

[2] The Korean cinematic "tough guy" of the era, Lee Dae-geun played the role of the servant, Sam-dol, who is the one man in the village with whom An-hyeop will not have sex.