Every Sunday, the impoverished lovers Heo-uk (Shin Seong-il) and Ji-yeon (Jeon Ji-yeon) meet. With no money for a taxi they resort to small cons, and with no money even for a cup of coffee they drift through wind-swept streets. For them, Sunday is both a day they long for and a day they dread. Six months into her pregnancy, Ji-yeon finally decides to have an abortion, and Heo-uk heads back out onto the streets to scrape together the fee for the procedure.

Completed in 1968, A Day Off was issued a demand for revisions by the Ministry of Public Information on the grounds that it portrayed an “immoral,” decadent atmosphere and the bleak lives of a poor couple. When censors suggested the film would pass if the ending were changed, director Lee Man-hee and the producers chose the bolder path: they gave up on releasing it altogether. Thirty-seven years later, in 2005, the film was finally rediscovered and met audiences for the first time. In 2017, the Korean Film Archive carried out a 4K digital restoration.