Start-Up

Against his mother’s advice, Go Taek-il leaves home and ends up working at a Chinese restaurant run by a towering man named Geo-seok. At the same time, his friend Woo Sang-pil starts down a very different path, joining a private loan business. The two young men ride the unpredictable wave of early adulthood, facing the sharp edges of independence, responsibility, and the limits of their own choices.

Taek-il is introduced as a restless spirit who drifts from one moment to the next, always chasing the next thing that might give his life shape. That day, after a run-in with the police for riding without a helmet alongside his best friend Sang-pil, his mother Jeong-hye’s call reaches him in a painful way, and she scolds him soundly. Impulsively, he leaves the house the very next day and heads toward Gunsan, carrying little more than resolve and a backpack full of questions. With nothing concrete to do, he stops by a nearby Chinese restaurant to eat and is unexpectedly drawn to the short-haired chef Geo-seok, whose energy seems to pulse with a different rhythm of life. The moment Taek-il notices an advertisement for a delivery person, he volunteers to apply, driven by a stubborn hunger to prove himself.

The restaurant’s owner—recounted in the story as a kind of stern, watchful presence—quickly recognizes that Taek-il is the type who leaves and returns on his own terms, a person who may not stay long but could shake things up while he’s there. Despite the doubts voiced by others, Taek-il ends up moving into the owner’s house and gradually grows closer to Geo-seok, drawn not just to the work but to the sense that he might belong somewhere for the first time in a long while. The restaurant becomes more than a paycheck; it becomes a place where his restlessness can be tempered, and perhaps redirected toward something steadier.

Meanwhile, Sang-pil faces a different struggle. He lives with his dementia-stricken grandmother and desperately needs a steady job. With help from his acquaintance Dong-hwa Kim, he finds a position in the loan business. At first, the work seems straightforward, almost easy, and the money comes in as if by luck. However, the peace is short-lived. A debt-collection run to a butcher’s shop turns ugly, and the boss administers a brutal beat that leaves Sang-pil shaken and physically vulnerable. The situation escalates when it becomes apparent that Taek-il’s mother Jeong-hye is entangled in the same world of debt, a fact that reshapes the dynamic and adds a heavy moral weight to the story.

As the plot unfolds, Jeong-hye’s own debt drives a new venture—a toast shop she opens, built on borrowed money. The storefront is illegal from the start, and the authorities move to demolish it, ordering the structure to come down. Taek-il learns of the impending demolition and rushes to the shop, but he finds himself powerless against the coercive force of the loan sharks. The scene captures a central tension of the film: individuals trying to survive and support their families within systems that punish debt and desperation, often leaving ordinary people caught in the crossfire.

The film threads together these parallel lives—one young man seeking belonging and purpose away from home, another navigating the precarious ethics of lending and debt—with a quiet, observational tone. It asks questions about responsibility, loyalty, and the ways in which family bonds can both empower and entangle. Throughout, the narrative remains grounded in everyday detail: the clatter of a small restaurant kitchen, the murmur of late-night conversations about money and futures, and the uneasy but persistent hope that a single decision can bend a life toward something steadier and truer.

Last Updated: November 22, 2025 at 16:00