AllMovie

A troubled young woman, Lee Jeong-eun (Su Ae), returns home after three years in prison. Her little brother, Jeong-hwan (Park Ji-bin), is thrilled to see her, but her taciturn father, Joo-seok (Ju Hyeon), a former cop who is now a fishmonger, suspects that his wayward daughter is only home to retrieve some loot she hid there. She tries to explain that she plans to change her life, but he makes it clear that he wants her stay to be a brief one. As a condition of her parole, Jeong-eun gets a job working in a salon, and she hopes to open her own beauty shop one day. She goes to visit her old gangster friends, and finds that one of them is now a boss. He's no happier to see her than her father was, and demands a large sum of cash he claims Jeong-eun stole from him before she went to prison, keeping her mouth shut and taking a fall for the gang. When Jeong-eun balks at paying the money, the gang begins to threaten her family. Making matters worse, she learns that her father is dying of cancer and needs a bone marrow transplant. As she deals with these dilemmas, Jeong-eun learns some painful truths about her father's past. Gajok (A Family), a modest hit in South Korea, marks the feature debut of writer/director Lee Jeong-Cheol. The film had its North American premiere at Subway Cinema's 2005 New York Asian Film Festival.