Eighteen-year-old Lee Sun-hwa, a North Korean defector without family, crosses the Tumen River and arrives in South Korea after a perilous escape. Released from a government resettlement center, she moves into a small apartment in Seoul’s Nowon district, confronting an alien culture and overwhelming academic pressures.

Haunted by the separation from her younger sister Hyang-hwa, Sun-hwa entrusts her meager savings to a broker, desperate to reunite with her. She labors in underpaid, menial jobs while reconnecting with Dong-chul, another teenage defector who also left his sister behind. Their bond deepens, but hope turns to despair when Sun-hwa learns that Hyang-hwa’s body has been found at the river.

Adrift and broken, Sun-hwa is drawn into a group of runaway youths—the fam—a surrogate family living on the margins. For the first time, she feels a fragile sense of belonging, even daring to dream again of becoming a dancer. But survival within this precarious world demands dangerous compromises, pulling her into cycles of violence and betrayal.

As tragedy engulfs her chosen family, Sun-hwa is forced to confront the losses that define her existence. In a final, haunting gesture, she walks into the river—echoing an ancient Korean lament for those forever torn between homelands.