Park Yeol, [Lee Je-hoon], is the magnetic but easygoing leader of the anarchist group Bulryeongsa, a coalition of fourteen Koreans and five Japanese members that the film portrays as resilient, courageous, and stubbornly independent. His partner Fumiko Kaneko, [Choi Hee-seo], stands out as a strong and intelligent ally whose humor and warmth balance the rigor of their shared revolutionary aims. Together with their fellow activists from Heukdohoe—a name the film and its characters circle in many contexts—the pair discuss their methods for resisting ongoing Japanese harassment of Koreans and sharpening the edge of their resistance.
Park Yeol, as the group’s organizer, hatched a controversial plan to strike at the heart of imperial authority by targeting Prince Hirohito, an act framed by the film as both a provocation and a statement about equality and power. Then a cataclysmic event shifts the mood and the stakes: the Kanto Earthquake of 1923 devastates Tokyo and surrounding areas, leaving ash and ruin in its wake and reshaping national conversations about loyalty, vengeance, and survival. In the furor that follows, Mizuno, [Kim In-woo], the Former Minister of Affairs, foments a troubling and dangerous rhetoric. He suggests Koreans poisoned wells and caused fires, presenting this view as a justification for a harsher, revenge-driven reaction against Korean communities, and he uses the disaster to advance a narrative that Japanese patriots should strike back to avenge perceived offenses against the nation and the imperial order.
As the dust settles, the Kanto Massacre—where thousands of Koreans were killed by vigilantes—becomes a pivotal backdrop he uses to deflect attention from the violence and to cast Yeol’s anarchist circle as the true threat. Mizuno’s strategy is to foreground the group’s activities in a courtroom drama designed to minimize discussion of the massacre and large-scale tragedy. The ensuing trial unfolds as a battlefield for ideas: Yeol and Kaneko articulate a radical critique of imperial authority, arguing that dismantling the sacred aura around the emperor and rejecting hereditary privilege could pave the way for real equality among people. Their exchanges reveal a fierce, intimate bond—two revolutionaries driven as much by shared love as by a shared cause—and the relationship becomes a core thread running through the film’s moral and political questions.
Ultimately the verdict is guilty, and Yeol and Kaneko narrowly escape the death penalty. After their separation, Kaneko’s prison death is recorded as a suicide, though the Heukdohoe and many viewers doubt that explanation, suspecting murder and a cover-up. The film hints at a larger historical arc, with Yeol eventually released after the occupation ends in 1946, leaving viewers with a haunting, lingering image: a fading photograph of Yeol and Kaneko that dissolves into darkness, a stark reminder of sacrifice, memory, and a struggle for justice that outlived the era they fought in. Their story, told with restraint and care, invites reflection on what it means to resist oppression and demand equality in a world shaped by power and myth.
