Early summer of 1953, in the weeks leading up to the Armistice, North and South Korea were engaged in fierce battle as they alternately pushed forward and were pushed back again. After the Armistice is signed, two children who were caught in the back-and-forth shifting of the front line find themselves abandoned in the demilitarized zone (DMZ). The children a boy and a girl survive by picking up discarded military rations and roasting wild potatoes. They wander the DMZ and have various experiences, like the time a land mine they use as a rock explodes and they run away in terror. As they roam the no man's land separating North and South, they encounter a North Korean spy on his way back across the border. The boy is killed, and the girl travels south in search of her mother.