Jongsu delivers parcels. He lives in a run-down family smallholding in earshot of the propaganda broadcasts from the border with North Korea. He wants to write but apart from petitioning for leniency for his father, who’s in jail, on trial for assaulting a neighbour, he writes nothing. He seems friendless, lives alone, with a cow. It’s a not a great life.
But then, randomly, Haemi comes along. She says she knows him – they’re from the same village, and she tells the story of how he once rescued her from a well. He says he doesn’t remember her. She’s done some acting, mimes peeling and eating a tangerine. She’s good. She’s as lively as he is stolid. She wants to live, to travel, discover the world. And she has a cat – could Jongsu feed it while she’s on a trip to Kenya? She shows him her place, and seduces him. Body and soul.
