The film connects the present of a failed revolutionary, who has left the factories and cities behind, with the death of a subcontracted worker two decades prior. Across this temporal divide, it explores the lingering, unabandonable possibility of a new revolution—a stark meditation on struggle, memory, and the embers of hope that refuse to be extinguished.​

The film opens at a memorial for the martyr Park Ilsu. A memorial, however, is more than an act of honoring the departed—it is a gathering where the living share memories, reconnect, and reaffirm the bonds forged in struggle. Oh, Valentine adopts this intimate act of remembrance as both its subject and its structure. 

Beginning with Park’s public legacy, the film flows into the intertwined lives of two men who once stood beside him: Woo Changsu, now a musician, and Cho Seongwoong, an ecological activist who has left the city behind. Their conversation begins with Park but soon expands, touching on the labor movement’s history, its internal fractures and external pressures, and the personal lives that persist beyond the front lines. As the film itself describes, these are the stories of “assistants”—those who operate just ahead of revolutionary time, enabling change from both within and without. 

In this, Oh, Valentine departs from conventional portraits of activism. It moves beyond retrospective narratives or self-critique to suggest new possibilities for both the “revolutionary party” and its “assistants.” It is the story of people living on in the wake of Park’s death—because of it, alongside it, and in its shadow—and of their search for meaning in that aftermath. Ultimately, the film is a love letter to them, and perhaps, to us all.

In the wake of the tragic death of Park Ilsoo, a subcontracted worker at Hyundai Heavy Industries, Oh, Valentine traces the bitter rift between regular and non-regular workers’ unions. The film bears witness to a chapter of defeat in the class-based labor movement, confronting not only the fractures running through today’s progressive struggles but also the deeper challenges facing the labor movement itself.

• ProducerKIM Ilkwon
• Cinematography HONG Jinhwon
• Edit HONG Jinhwon
• Sound HONG Chosun
• Cast CHO Seongwoong WOO Changsoo