When Mak-dong returns to his hometown of Ilsan after two and a half years of military service, he finds that it has been transformed into a satellite town. Struggling to adjust and desperate to find work, he unwittingly becomes trapped in a dangerous war between rival underworld gangs. In his directorial debut, Lee wastes no time challenging the conventions of genre verisimilitude – whilst Green Fish could play like a dark gangster film, Lee instead pursues the traits of realism that often characterise Korean cinema.