The only film from female director Park Nam Ok, the melodrama The Widow offers a different perspective of the female experience in postwar Korea, and a woman's struggle between duty and desire. Raising a daughter alone after the war, widow Shin (Lee Min Ja) is much indebted to her late husband's friend Seong Jin (Shin Dong Hun) but resists his romantic advances. Instead, she falls for Taek (Lee Taek Kyun), who is carrying on an affair with Seong Jin's jealous wife (Park Yeong Suk). Shin is willing to give up everything for Taek, but his heart changes again when his girlfriend returns.
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Youngbun, a middle-aged woman, leaves her grown stepchild for home after her husband died of chronic disease. She wants to live a new life. Although she’s poor, there is always hope in her loving and energetic self. Young female Han-hee is a Pilates instructor. She, too, is poor, but is diligent and obedient in her daily life.
Each night, a homeless girl stays in abandoned houses to get by. In the winter, she leaves the cold environs of Seoul and heads to Busan, eventually finding an empty house in an abandoned part of town. She starts looking for a way to make a living, but it’s difficult to find a job with no home address, no ID card, and no phone number. She ultimately does find work, but her employer takes advantage of her and ends up firing her without paying any wages. No one seems to be on her side in this harsh and abusive world.
The life of runaway girls is exposed to the threats of prostitution or violent situations during the quest to find a place to stay overnight like Eunsoo and Soohyang.
