In the bleak industrial landscape of historical port city of Incheon , five young women struggle to transition from high school to the adult world. Hae-joo pursues a career at a brokerage firm in Seoul , Tae-hee works without pay at her family's sauna and volunteers as a typist for a poet with cerebral palsy , Ji-young struggles to find work while living in a dilapidated house with her elderly grandparents and a kitten named Teetee, and twin sisters Bi-ryu and Ohn-jo live on their own and sell handmade jewellery on the street.
Hae-joo tries to make herself invaluable at work but finds that she is at the bottom of the workplace hierarchy, relegated to running errands like sending faxes and bringing coffee.
She is preoccupied with impressing her bosses at work and improving her physical appearance. In contrast, Ji-young has more immediate concernsβfinding work to support herself and her grandparents and getting the landlord to fix the roof that is on the verge of collapsing. Unable to find meaningful employment, Ji-young grows increasingly frustrated with her poverty-stricken life with her elderly grandparents.
Without parents to vouch for her, and without computer skills or driver's license, she drifts from one low-wage job to another. Tae-hee, who is constantly belittled and ostracized by her comfortably middle-class but oppressively heteropatriarchal family, dreams of escaping the conformity but does not know where she could go.
She finds herself drawn to ferry terminals and foreign migrant workers. Bi-ryu and Ohn-jo, whose Chinese-speaking grandparents have disowned their mother and refuse to see them for reasons not discussed in the film, live on their own in an ethnic Chinese enclave in Incheon. Hae-joo and Ji-young, who used to be best friends in high school, drift apart throughout the film in part due to their divergent socioeconomic status. After a sleepover at the twins' house one night, Ji-young returns home early in the morning to find that the roof of her house has collapsed, killing her grandparents.
