Green Fish 1997

Having just been discharged from the military, Mak-dong, Han Suk-kyu, is on the train home when fate nudges him toward trouble. As he leans out the window, Mi-ae, Shim Hye-jin, a striking woman in the car ahead, leans out as well and her pink scarf slips free, landing right on Mak-dong’s face and briefly blinding him. When he climbs back into the carriage to return the scarf, he becomes entangled in a scuffle with a gang of thugs harassing Mi-ae. From the outset, Mak-dong finds himself drawn into a situation that will pull him into a web of loyalty, danger, and a future he never asked for.

Back in Ilsan, the landscape of Mak-dong’s home has shifted dramatically. The once-familiar fields, acacias, and rice paddies have given way to gleaming high-rise apartments. The sense of home feels fractured: his mother now works as a house maid, and most of his siblings have left, each chasing their own precarious livelihoods. The eldest among them—the mentally disabled brother sometimes called “big brother”—remains at home, but the rest have moved on. A sister works as a hostess, a younger brother delivers eggs, and an older brother serves as a detective with a volatile temper and a drinking habit. Mak-dong’s dream, as he shares with his older brother, is simple and almost naive: the family would come together again to run a small, shared business and live in harmony. The response from his brother is blunt and grounded in harsh reality—how could they possibly survive together with so many mouths to feed?

In a fresh search for work in the alienated Seoul neighborhood of Youngdeungpo, Mak-dong spots Mi-ae once more and follows her to a nightclub where she performs as a singer. She is the girlfriend of Bae Tae-gon, a gang boss who runs a precarious empire. When Mak-dong tries to shield Mi-ae from men who drag her into a car, he is beaten badly. At Mi-ae’s urging, the boss offers him a reference that opens a doorway to a job at a parking lot, presenting a new path that could bring money and a sense of belonging.

An opportunity to earn large sums comes when Mak-dong is asked to stage a convincing fight with a councilman who stands in the way of Bae Tae-gon’s building permit. To sell the act, Mak-dong purposefully injures his fingers by slamming them in a door, a painful act that marks his commitment. Impressed by his grit, Bae Tae-gon elevates him, allowing him to address the boss as hyung, or “Big Brother,” and admitting him as a full-fledged member of the gang. This rapid promotion unsettles some of the underlings, who feel that such loyalty should take time to prove itself.

Now part of the family, Mak-dong finds an unexpected kinship with Mi-ae. Their bond grows amid shared hopelessness, even as it remains ambiguous in its future. In a pivotal train-side exchange, Mak-dong offers Mi-ae a photo of the large green tree in front of his Ilsan home, a symbol of the life he left behind. Mi-ae is struck by Mak-dong’s naive purity, and when her beeper signals a summons from Bae Tae-gon to return home, she tells Mak-dong she will do whatever her big brother commands. He answers with quiet, old-fashioned loyalty, and she laughs at the simplicity of his attachment to a traditional sense of duty.

The gang’s orders shift, as Kim Yang-kil, the former boss who built the empire, returns from years behind bars to reclaim a stake in it all. In a series of humiliations directed at Bae Tae-gon, Yang-kil’s presence threatens the balance of power within the gang. Bae Tae-gon eventually brings Mak-dong to a deserted building to discuss dreams and the kind of empire each man longs to secure. Mak-dong speaks of his own dream with a rare sincerity, and in a violent outburst of loyalty and fear, Mak-dong stabs Kim Yang-kil to death in a stark, blood-soaked bathroom confrontation. The act unleashes a raw, hysterical release in Mak-dong, a moment that marks the irreversible turn of his fate.

Immediately afterward, Mak-dong makes a crucial phone call home—the iconic “phone booth” moment that anchors the memory of his choices. He asks his mentally disabled big brother if they remember how they used to fish and how he once lost a day of fishing for a green fish, a memory that intensifies the sense of loss and longing in the room. The weight of his decision lingers as Bae Tae-gon leads him to the same deserted building, and, true to his ruthless method, fatally shoots Mak-dong, who slides across the windshield of Bae Tae-gon’s car and looks straight at the camera as Mi-ae’s scream pierces the moment of death.

In the aftermath, Bae Tae-gon and Mi-ae relocate to Ilsan New Town, a sign of the suburb’s evolving middle-class image. Their wandering life takes a poignant turn when they stumble upon an old-style restaurant housed in a traditional building. Mi-ae appears to be pregnant, and as they order chicken soup, the scene conjures a ritualistic memory of sacrifice: a chicken is slaughtered in front of them, a stark echo of Mak-dong’s own willingness to give up his future for the dream he held dear. Outside, Mi-ae finally recognizes the old tree in the photograph she has kept and understands, with tears, that it is Mak-dong’s family home, the symbol of a life that once existed and a family that might never fully return.

In the end, the film threads together the ache of loyalty, the fragility of dreams, and the costs of striving for a life that many families can only imagine. The story lingers on the pull of kinship and the way one man’s choices—driven by hope, stubbornness, and a hard-edged sense of duty—reshape the world around him, leaving behind memories that keep returning in the quiet moments of a changing suburb.