There is HWAPYONG Restaurant with full of hopes of the family of three generations. Grandfather, the first-generation owner, and the first son, the second-generation owner, who lives as a fugitive after being branded as a communist and his wife and Cheol-soo’s mom who has to work hard by juggling work and family without complaint. The second son, Cheol-soo’s uncle, who sometimes acts like a child with an excuse of being the second son but loves Cheol-soo more than anyone and seriously cares about the restaurant. To the third generation, young Cheol-soo, family is the most precious. By the time when ‘Seoul Spring’ longing for democratization came to nothing due to ‘Retreat from Seoul Station’ in 1980, there were a series of peaceful protests in Gwangju, Jeolla Province. In warm May, a large dark cloud is looming over HWAPYONG Restaurant, the home and everything of this ordinary family of Cheol-soo, in the middle of Gwangju.
The title Good Light, Good Air is oddly paradoxical. Keenly working at the point where his artistic identity and persistent attention on modern Korean history meet, director Im in this film focused on where the history of oppression and struggle intersect between Gwangju and Buenos Aires. In both cities, a great number of people who fought against the dictatorship were slaughtered and disappeared. The people of both societies still live with that trauma. When the testimonies of the victims of the two cities cross over, the film gives us chills as the eerie history of the two is very similar. Through Good Light, Good Air, director Im asks us how we will remember the past from where we stand right now.
Chae-geun is a driver for hire with manic depression. He often talks to his son who is studying in the States and tells him he would keep his promise. He does a favor by acting as a temporary fiancé of a single woman named Jin-hee, who works as a waitress at a restaurant he frequents. Her father, who was a victim of the Gwangju Uprising in 1980, shows him a gun he stashed away 39 years ago and asks Chae-geun to help him exact revenge on those who were responsible for the May 18 incident.
The movie is a compilation of the movie "Wilderness" in which a member of the airborne unit who killed a girl during the Gwangju Democratization Movement burned himself to death with remorse and "Mr. Kant's Presentation", the story of a man who wanders around as a result of torture after participating as a civilian army.
There are people whose lives have been shaken by the 'Gwangju Video'. On May of 1980, the course of their lives changed in front of a huge wave of truth in Gwangju. The people who made and spread the 'Gwangju Video' are also the people who had their bodies on the waves. The hidden stories of these people, the 40th anniversary of the Gwangju Uprising, and the pursuit to trace the missing 4 hours of mass shooting will be revealed for the first time.
A budding love story between a medical student and a nurse takes place in May 1980, during a time of civil unrest and military oppression in Gwangju.