An assistant to a TV producer, eager to stay off his bad side, promises to convince her former professor, a famous but reclusive academic, to appear on their show, which helps locate long-lost persons. Who does grey-haired Professor Yun Suk Young want to see again more than anything? The answer to that question lies decades in the past.

1969 was a tumultuous year the world over, and South Korea was no exception. President Park Chung Hee's iron-fisted dictatorship has provoked a backlash among angry students, and trouble is brewing. Suk Yong and his comrades decide that Seoul is getting too tense, and embark on a summer retreat in the countryside, where they will help bring a rural village up to date with the modern world. But Suk Young discovers pretty Seo Jung In, the only local girl who shows no interest in the strikingly handsome student from a well-to-do family - and that, of course, means he's soon falling head over heels for her. Their bumpy courtship, however, is threatened by dark secrets that Jung-in hides about her family and their history in the village, secrets that will haunt the pair as the volatile political climate catches up with them.