In the spring of 1992, Kim Dong-won, the film's director, met two long-term political prisoners who were charged with being communist spies from North Korea. During their 30 years in jail, the prisoners never gave up their allegiance to communism and North Korea. When they were finally released from prison, they began living in the Kim's neighborhood, and he became quite close with one of the prisoners, Cho Chang-son. Kim's film documents the former prisoners' return to mainstream Korean society and their campaign for repatriation. On the DVD container, Kim is quoted as saying: "As I met with many others of them, I became interested in these people, who were completely different from what I expected."