Synopsis
 After discharging from the army, Chang-su, a massagist at a public bath, happens to meet Yeong-ja at the police station. Three years ago, when he was an ironworker, he fell in love with Yeong-ja, a housemaid in a rich family. After being raped by her employer’s son during Changsu’s military service period, she works in a sewing factory. Yeong-ja loses one arm by caraccident…

 Program Note
 It is the time of modernization/industrialization lead by development dictatorship, the young girls from countryside came to Seoul for better jobs and money. They worked as factory girls, bus conductors, and housekeepers, which are notorious for the three lowest paid jobs with no benefits. In Yeong-Ja\'s Heydays, unlike the film’s ironic title, the main protagonist Yeong-ja, a one-arm prostitute, unfortunately goes through all of these three jobs. The film is in flashback structures and the core part of the drama shows Yeong-ja in an accident. She works as a bus conductor to become a driver and to cruise around the city but her dream was crushed when she was pushed out of the packed bus by accident and lost her one arm.
 The amputated arm flies in the air with the ‘high rise building forest of Seoul City’ in the background. This scene portrays a young girl’s disappointments and frustrated desires, as well as her dreams and hopes in a symbolic and compressed metaphors. The last shot of the film, the National Assembly and the continuing apartment development sights overlap with the close-up of Yeong-ja’s peculiar face, tries to force a happy ending to the story. The contradictions and problems of low-pay female labors, who sacrificed for post-war industrial development in South Korea and the project of modernization of the fatherland, rises to the surface in questions. (KWON Eun-sun)