Secret Sunshine 2007

After her husband dies in a traffic accident, Lee Shin-ae Jeon Do-yeon and her only child Jun Seon Jeong-yeop move from their hometown to Miryang, in South Gyeongsang Province, to start life anew. As they enter the city, their car breaks down. A local mechanic in Miryang, Kim Jong-chan Song Kang-ho, fixes the car and lends a hand as Shin-ae opens a piano academy and tries to buy land to build a house. Jong-chan says he is only trying to be a Good Samaritan.

One afternoon, Shin-ae meets a middle-school girl whose father is Jun’s daycare teacher, Park Do-seop [Jo Young-jin]. Just outside her home, Shin-ae hears from a pharmacist that the solution to her problems is belief in God. Shin-ae is skeptical but nevertheless takes the pharmacist’s scripture. At home, Shin-ae and Jun engage in a lighthearted prank where Shin-ae pretends to be unable to find Jun.

Shin-ae’s brother visits from Seoul, wondering why she is in Miryang considering that her husband cheated on her. Shin-ae denies this but still hates her late husband for unspecified reasons. Before leaving, the brother tells Jong-chan that he is not Shin-ae’s type.

One night, Shin-ae returns home late after partying to discover that Jun is missing. She receives a phone call (implied to be from Jun’s kidnapper) and draws all of the money from her bank account to pay as ransom. Appalled at the pitiful amount of money she paid, Shin-ae says the attempt to buy land was a lie to appear rich; she had no more money.

Returning home, Shin-ae discovers the girl peering into her residence; the latter refuses to explain why and escapes. Later, police officers arrive to take her to a reservoir, where Jun was drowned. The murderer is swiftly captured and he is Jun’s daycare teacher Do-seop. Yet Shin-ae doesn’t seem vengeful and sheds no tears at Jun’s funeral.

Feeling unwell one day, Shin-ae visits the pharmacist who convinces her to join their faith, though she doesn’t understand why God would let an innocent child like Jun die. Followed by Jong-chan, Shin-ae soon becomes a believer and claims to have found inner peace; even Jong-chan starts going to church.

At home, Shin-ae hears noises in her bathroom and opens the door, crying out Jun’s name, but the bathroom user is a little boy from Jun’s daycare. Dropping off the other daycare children, Shin-ae sees the girl being bullied but doesn’t intervene.

Shin-ae’s church friends throw her a birthday party, during which she says she will visit Do-seop in prison to forgive him. Jong-chan doesn’t understand why she needs to visit him to forgive but accompanies her. Surprisingly, Do-seop says he also found God and that God absolved him of his sins. Shin-ae cannot understand how God could forgive him before she has.

Shin-ae later steals a CD of the song “Lies” from a store and blasts it on a loudspeaker where a group has gathered to thank God. That night, she receives a phone call, which she claims to Jong-chan to have been from the kidnapper; he dismisses the idea but tells her to calm down and arranges a dinner date the next day. Shin-ae walks into the pharmacy, however, and seduces the pharmacist’s husband, but he cannot perform and she becomes sick. That evening, she goes to Jong-chan, who angrily rejects her proposal for sex. On the way home, she passes by a vigil for her by the pharmacist couple; it is interrupted when a rock is hurled at a window. At home, Shin-ae slashes her wrists.

On the day of her discharge from the hospital, Jong-chan takes her to a salon, where the girl now works, to do her hair. She says she was sent to juvenile detention for hanging with the wrong crowd and quit school. In the middle of her cut, Shin-ae leaves the salon. At home, she begins cutting her own hair. Jong-chan arrives, offering to hold up a mirror for her.