[2][3][4][5] Set during the reign of King Yeongjo, the film is about the life of Crown Prince Sado, the heir to the throne who was deemed unfit to rule and, at age 27, was condemned to death by his own father by being locked in a rice chest for eight days.

[11][12] It was also selected as the South Korean entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 88th Academy Awards, but it was not nominated.

[13][14] The film opens with the crown prince, Sado, carrying out a plot to kill his father, the king.

The movie proceeds to flip back and forth chronologically between the rice box in the courtyard and the history of how it got there.

The king is presented as a doting father very concerned with the educational attainments of his young son.

He fails to properly acquire a passage written by his father, and we find him preferring to socialize and paint.

In his new role, Sado is assertive and just, but some factions that have enjoyed special privilege under the corrupt elder king take issue with his rulings.

Then Sado begins to consult his father to make wiser decisions, but the old man ridicules his son for being unable to govern independently.

After the elderly king's departure, Sado remains kneeling in the courtyard where his subjects fear he will die of exposure.

The queen is forced to revoke her approval, and in humiliation, she stops eating, bringing her life to an end.

Sado dies on the seventh day of his imprisonment and is buried on the eighth, but his father has all memory of him erased.