Peppermint Candy follows the life of Youngho who has turned from an innocent man to a destroyed middle-aged man through the seven stages of flashback in the span of 20 years. Lee Chang-dong’s reflective journey starts from the IMF financial crisis in 1999 back to the Gwangju Democratization Movement in 1980. This film depicts political events that Korean society had experienced in transition from the military dictatorship to modern capitalism, revealing the root causes of social problems, violence, and corruption. In the narrative structure of time paradox, meaning that the plot time progresses while the story time goes backward, the protagonist’s responses and behaviors make us reevaluate historical events from today’s perspective. The reverse chronology demolishes naturalistic traditions deep-rooted in Korean cinema and opens a new era of innovative storytelling entwined with history and fiction. [JANG Byungwon]