The opening scene of Lee Chang-dong's 1999 film, PEPPERMINT CANDY, begins with a picnic and ends with a suicide. A disheveled, middle-aged hwesawon, or “company employee,” named Young-ho (played by Sol Kyunggu) stumbles into a gathering of friends near a small river. The dozen or so happy picnickers, dancing and singing to a karaoke machine, seem at first not to notice the grey-suited, unkempt man, but they soon recognize him as an old friend from twenty years ago. Young-ho is offered soju, a Korean rice liquor, but he is not in a particularly celebratory mood. He volunteers to sing a song, but the sad melody the salary man belts out, with great anguish, only casts a somber pall over the party. Silently returning the microphone, Young-ho wanders off into the shallow river toward a nearby railroad overpass.

While his friends resume their merriment, Young-ho somehow has managed to climb to the top of the bridge. He stands on the suspended tracks, looking grim and miserable. Soon a train rumbles toward him while repeatedly blowing its whistle. Tension builds with the nearing confrontation between Young-ho and the train, underscored by accelerated shot-reverse shots. A worried picnicker has left the party and stands beneath the tracks with a helpless look on his face. He frantically screams his suicidal friend's name above the loudening rumble: “Kim Young-ho!” As the heavy train comes treacherously close, Young-ho turns to face it. The film quickly cuts to a perspective from the train and he yells out, with outspread arms and a wide-open mouth, “I want to go back!” The camera-train relentlessly rails toward Young-ho, until it stops on a close-up of his anguished face, signaling the moment of impact. Over the freeze frame, the clanging of the train continues on the soundtrack.

Lee's film obeys Young-ho's desire to go back by narrating the course of his life backward, depicting significant scenes from his personal history: Spring 1999, Summer 1994, Spring 1987, Fall 1984, May 1980, and Fall of 1979. These moments provide snapshots of one South Korean man's life and allow the viewer to piece together how Young-ho's misery in the present is connected to a series of regrettable decisions made in the past.