Director Ryu Mi-rye’s Life Goes On starts with Mom, who has been awarded the ‘Good Mother’ Prize twice, landing a new boyfriend. The documentary finely depicts mother as expected and as experienced by her children, and the reflections of the daughters on the passions, discouragement and loneliness of the woman called their mother.
 The daughters harbor a hurt coming from their childhood, when they felt happy over their wife-battering father’s death. There is also the hurt coming from a mother who was more focused on survival and her own feelings than on giving herself to her children. The story of an elder sister who leaves home and country to fulfill herself is also told. In Life Goes On, there is deep introspection on woman as an independent individual and on the place of the mother. For the children, mom’s love affair is uncomfortable and uneasy: mom, who has never been a comfort emotionally, never made a happy face, has suddenly become a happy and lovable woman. But as the director and her sisters marry and have daughters themselves, they come to see the mother inside themselves, and their own future in their mother. Not wanting to pass their harsh childhood on to their daughters, and not wanting to become a mother like their own, the daughters of Life Goes On fear themselves, reflect on themselves, and make up with their mother. Gradually they come to understand that mother is an independent woman/human that has emotional needs and passions, and lament the fact that their mom is not free to lead the new life she wants. (Kim Eun-shil)