September 1988. One evening, five neighborhood friends, all born in 1971, watch "A Better Tomorrow II" in the bedroom of Taek, when their parents call them down for dinner.

Duk-seon is the middle child of the Sung family, that struggles to make ends meet. She fights a lot with her older sister, Bo-ra, who is a top university student. They live in a 'half-basement' home. Jung-hwan is the youngest child of the Kim family, a family of relative wealth, which lives upstairs to Duk-seon. The father's behavior is frowned upon by Jung-hwan and his mother, Mi-ran, and by nearly everybody except Duk-seon. The tech-savvy first-born son, Jung-bong, refuses to study and angers Mi-ran further. Sun-woo is the oldest child of his family and lives with his widowed mother and toddler sister in the block next to Duk-seon's. His mother is a bad cook, but he approves of her cooking because it's hers. Across the street, Dong-ryong lives with two full-time working parents, Ssangmun High School's fearsome dean being his father. The families share and switch side dishes to go with their evening rice, sending their children to exchange those dishes. Taek, who lives next to Dong-ryong, goes downstairs and has dinner with his widowed father; their dinner table is slowly filled with dishes their neighbors brought to them.

Duk-seon is jealous of her younger brother when her father buys him a large ice cream cone, and demands her birthday celebration to be separated from her sister's, whose birthday is a week before hers.

The neighborhood mothers discuss whether sons or daughters are best while preparing food. Dong-ryong and Jung-hwan confront a gang of people who want to steal their money to buy tteokbokki and lose their sneakers, after their classmate 'Michael' (nick-named after a Dooly the little dinosaur character) has lost all of his money. Sun-woo involves himself in the case and hurts himself in a fight, and his mother is concerned about him, especially after finding his room empty after calling him for errands. She is concerned that her son had taken up smoking, but he comes home after buying a drink for his father's altar.

Duk-seon is preparing hard for her role as picket holder for the Madagascar delegation at the Seoul Olympics opening ceremony, about to be held on her 17th (Western age) birthday. She struggles, but she is committed, practicing every night in the bedroom she shares with Bo-ra and in the streets after rehearsing. As she is one of only three high schoolers taking part in the event, the entire neighborhood is talking about her role. Stakes become very high when rehearsals start in the Olympic stadium. During a TV interview, Duk-seon finds out that Madagascar is part of the countries that refuse to take part in the games. However, her reaction in the television broadcast impresses the Olympic organisation, and she is reassigned to the Ugandan delegation. After fulfilling her role as a picket holder in front of the world, she comes home to her father, who gives her a separate birthday cake.

Grandma, the mother of Dong-il, visits the Sung family. She tells her granddaughters about how she bore and raised two daughters and two sons, and how the oldest-born son worked jobs to earn money at a young age so that their father could study hard and become a banker. Duk-seon adores her.

The next morning, Duk-seon is late for school, but finds time to greet Taek on her way. Duk-seon is befriended with two classmates at the Ssangmun Girls' High, Wang Ja-hyun 'Joey Wong' and Jang Mi-ok 'Maggie Cheung', who determine with a game on paper how much they like Tom Cruise.

On the initiative of Mi-ran, the parents buy and cook spaghetti ('American noodles') for the neighborhood to eat. They joke about how everyone wants Taek to be their son-in-law after he wins a major tournament with the equivalent of 50.000 dollars in prize money, enough to buy a high-end apartment. Bo-ra later comes home, and announces that her superior wants her to go on a trip. She is angered by the fact that Duk-seon took her denim jacket, which she wanted to pack for the trip, to wear to school with.

The Seoul Olympics have come to an end, with Korea winning the largest amount of medals in their history. Dong-ryong, who has instant foods for his meals every day, complains how bad Sun-woo's meal is, to the disdain of the class president. The boys later play shirtless soccer, and Sun-woo impresses the opponent's captain. He is picked on for wearing his father's bracelet by the opponent, but defends himself. That evening, Dong-ryong plans to sneak into the cinema without tickets, but rethinks that and instead borrows an adult movie to watch at Taek's. The next evening, Dong-ryong, Sun-woo and Jung-hwan attempt to hitch a seat at the cinema, but they get caught.

At the girl's school, the juniors each get a different book about romance or another topic to read. Duk-seon panics when she hears she has to meet the headmaster. Instead of a punishment, she gets a phone call with bad news: her beloved grandma has died.

When arriving at grandma's hometown with her family, she is surprised that nobody, including her dad, feels down or saddened, happily eating Korean barbecue and drinking copious amounts of soju. Dong-il is instead happy to see family and friends again who he has not seen for a long time. Only after the first-born of grandma, coming all the way from a laundromat in the United States, arrives at the site, everyone breaks down.

The next evening, Dong-il is back in town, and asks Taek when he misses his mother the most. Taek, who lost his mother at the age of five, responds with a clear answer: every day. As the youths come together to celebrate his birthday, the episode flashes back to the 1970s, when they were toddlers. Taek moved to Seoul with his father after his mother died to cope with the loss, and despite his shyness, he was accepted as a friend by the other, much noisier kids.

October 1988. While eating tteokbokki and ramen in the neighborhood snack shop, Joey and Maggie congratulate Duk-seon with getting a boyfriend after assuming Sun-woo has a crush on her. She has in fact dated Sun-woo for the first time in the past summer. The girls practice hard for their performance at a school trip, with a cassette player at stake. Duk-seon is motivated, because she now has to share her player with her sister.

Dong-il gets mad after seeing boiled potatoes on the dinner table. Il-hwa is mad at him for spending all the little money that is left after paying expenses and debt on useless things and alcohol, instead of saving it. Many sellers of useless things are sympathetic, as young as his children or reminiscent of his mother. Mi-ran is irritated with Sung-kyun to such an extent that she jokes about selling him off. Jung-bong is caught saving postal stamps instead of studying. Il-hwa tells Mi-ran that the Sung family is poor, because they are indebted. Moo-sung struggles with cooking meals for his son.

When she goes off with her school on the trip, Duk-seon is reminded to never lose her parents' expensive camera. When she finds out that she left the camera in the train, she breaks down, and her headmaster informs her parents calmly about this event. She continues the trip with a good mood. Meanwhile, No-eul is caught selling alcohol in the streets, and Il-hwa is concerned further. Sung-kyun buys an expensive jacket which he thinks is of good quality, only for his wife to easily break its zipper.

When Joey and Maggie attempt to venture into the boy's pavillion, they are injured after falling from a high ledge. Jung-hwan, Dong-ryong and Sun-woo are reluctant to replace them, but they accept the offer. They perform so well that they win the cassette player for their neighborhood friend. Duk-seon and Jung-hwan run off, but are being chased by master Ryu. They are driven into a small hole in the wall, where their bodies are pressed against each other. Duk-seon gets home, and is chased by an angry mother because of losing the camera.

November 1988. Duk-seon and Jung-hwan miss the bus to school. The next day, they succeed, but it gets tumultuous in the full bus. In an attempt to stabilize herself, Duk-seon rips open the shirt of Jung-hwan in an embarassing moment. As their final year of high school gets closer, the youths of Ssangmun spend more and more time in rooms dedicated to studying. They listen to music, study (don't study in many cases), and fall asleep. Duk-seon has decided to study hard, but refuses to get tutored by Bo-ra.

The parents eat with the Kim family, where fried fish is served; a luxury for the Sung family. In order to get better at focusing, taking up Baduk is suggested for Duk-seon. She spends one evening with Taek, where she fails to play Baduk and solve Rubik's Cubes. Taek, on the other hand, struggles to cook a good ramen or open a yogurt cup while being able to solve the cubes with ease. Jung-bong owns a dozen puzzle cubes, obsessed with solving every one of them.

It's Mi-ran's birthday, and the Kim family eat out at a pork cutlet restaurant. When Sung-kyun calls everyone for dinner, the family members appear distant to each other, and the family elder struggles to keep everyone together and in a good mood, while the waiter asks if he could take a picture of them as a souvenir. Dong-il is revealed to like marinated clams so much, he angers his wife over their absence at the dinner table. Tired of the fights between his parents, No-eul puts on the TV loud. After coming home, Sung-kyun tries to attract family members by buying premium ice cream, but finds the box untouched and the ice cream melted. Drinking in broad daylight, the ladies complain about their husbands' behavior, and deem Sun-young the luckiest one before suggesting she should be together with Moo-sung. The kids gather to get tutored by Bo-ra. She is gravely disappointed with the work attitude of most of her juniors.

Taek lost to a novice opponent, and has difficulties dealing with his very first professional match loss. The neigborhood friends come to help, skipping dinner with their parents to gather at his place. They say discouraging things to Taek, who soon realises they are jokes. They teach him to let things out by swearing, and they spend the rest of the night doing fun things.

Disappointed with the school grades of their middle child, Dong-il and Il-hwa eat at a kalguksu restaurant together to cope. They see another couple loving each other, and that inspires them to get along. Sung-kyun gets further disengaged with the rest of his family. Jung-hwan realizes that, and greets his father the way the elder likes to greet Duk-seon, only to tell him he eats dinner elsewhere. His mood is lifted when his wife makes him a hot meal and asks him for soju. Similarly, Il-hwa cheers Dong-il up with freshly marinated clams.

After former President and dictator Chun Doo-hwan apologizes for his actions, Seoul experiences a wave of renewed student protests. Dong-il is caught in these protests and gives his pocket money to a student fo pay for his way home. The breadwinner gets home safely, but with Bo-ra nowhere in sight. Bo-ra later enters the living room and fights with her parents. In her room, she cleans up wounds on her forearms and checks a note for a follow-up meeting with a political party. When the mothers gather, Il-hwa assumes that her eldest daughter is taking part in the protests.

During recess, Sun-woo successfully re-enacts a popular commercial, but when asked to do it again, he falls and injures his ankle. Concerned about her son, Sun-young plans to cook him certain foods, but Sun-woo thinks she may not be able to afford the ingredients needed. She buys both of her children banana milk instead.

When an amount of briquettes are delivered to the Kim household that could warm their house for a thousand days, Sun-young defends herself against comments about her poverty and appearance. Mi-ran, who had to warm her house with firewood until not long ago, is concerned about the way Sun-young's mother-in-law treats her daughter-in-law. When Sun-woo's paternal grandmother pays a visit, Sun-woo politely declines any conversation, after which she talks down on Sun-young on her financial situation and how she lives in her house for free, on the pension of her son, after he died.

Duk-seon goes to the study room for the first time. She cleans her section, plans out how much time to spend on which subjects, and then falls asleep. She dreams of being in a relationship with Sun-woo. At the meantime, Jung-hwan is asleep in front of the TV and dreams of being in a relationship with Duk-seon. Leaving the study room late, she manages to get a ride home under Jung-hwan's umbrella.

Mi-ran is irritated that the men in her house are lazy, dirty and incompetent in doing housework, or at least appear as so. A concerned housewife, she explains everything that needs to be done in the house in detail before she leaves home for the weekend to tend to her mother, who has a injured herself. Jung-bong turns out to have extensive expertise in housekeeping. After Mi-ran leaves, the gentlemen do as they wish, finish the leftovers she ordered them to eat for dinner and clean the house in a hurry just before she returns. It turns out that they intentionally keep Mi-ran busy with tasks since she could afford to be a housewife.

Duk-seon is requested by her parents to study as hard as her older sister, when the latter is seen protesting in front on television. Bo-ra comes home, and her parents are enraged. She is grounded by her father, who guards the door of her room tightly to prevent her escape in the middle of the night. Her mother insists that she at least gets to eat.

Unlike her mother-in-law, Sun-young's own mother is a warmhearted person who cares about her children. She pays a visit to her, shows concern for Sun-woo, and brings in goods before having to leave quickly. Luckily, she has time to call her daughter by phone that evening. Jin-joo requests a real banana from her mother, which costs a fortune in 1980s Korea. After receiving a hefty sum of money from her mother, Sun-young treats her children with a real banana.

One day, Il-hwa finds her daughters' bedroom empty and searches for her troubled daughter. Bo-ra is on her way to a conference with the protest group when she gets arrested. Only after her mother defends her firstborn child to the tooth by explaining that her child is the pride of the neighborhood, Bo-ra confesses to the police officer and her mother what she has done.

December 1988. Dong-ryong helps pack Taek's suitcase for his next tournament in China and requests him to buy pizza for his friends when he gets home. Taek instead insists that he watches a movie with his prize money. At the tournament, he is the only representative of Korea left, and he has a handicap of three dan against most opponents and six consecutive lost matches behind him.

Jung-bong regularly writes letters to the editors of the nationally broadcast radio program Starry Nights, and with his seventh college entrance exam upcoming, he gets several letters of his read on the show, in which he wishes good luck to Taek and praises Bo-ra. Taek makes it to the final round of the tournament, and Bo-ra saves his butt while he is confronted by two unruly, smoking men.

Jung-hwan finds out that Duk-seon plans to send a letter about her crush on Sun-woo to Starry Nights. Taek wins the tournament, and orders pizza to eat for his friends. During the pizza party, Jung-hwan asks Sun-woo to confess his love on the first day of snow. Instead of confessing to Duk-seon, he meets up with Bo-ra on the first day of snow. When she bawls her eyes out after realizing that Sun-woo has his eyes on her sister instead of her, the love letter she sent to Starry Nights is read aloud on the show.