A rookie policeman, Yong-ho is pressured by peers into violence. He rejects Sun-im when she visits him, choosing a path of cynicism.

During the Gwangju Uprising, Yong-ho is a young soldier who accidentally kills an innocent student. This traumatic event serves as the "inciting incident" for his moral decay.

Yong-ho is a furniture store owner whose marriage and business are crumbling. He treats his wife with cruelty while engaging in his own affairs.

By moving backward through twenty years (1979–1999), the film forces viewers to confront the consequences of Yong-ho's actions before understanding the traumas that shaped him.

Peppermint Candy: A Cinematic Descent into Korea's Soul Lee Chang-dong's 1999 masterpiece, ( Bakhasatang ), is a cornerstone of the Korean New Wave, offering a harrowing exploration of personal and national trauma. The film begins with a visceral, iconic scene: a middle-aged man, Kim Yong-ho, stands on a train trestle screaming, "I want to go back!" as a train hurtles toward him. What follows is a reverse-chronological journey through seven chapters of his life, tracing his tragic descent from a cynical, broken man back to his innocent, idealistic youth. The Reverse Journey: Seven Chapters of a Life

The film ends where it began—at the same riverbank twenty years earlier. We see a young, hopeful Yong-ho who dreams of photography and shares a piece of peppermint candy with Sun-im.