The film takes place mostly in a mental institution filled with an anarchic menagerie of patients. Young-goon, a young woman working in a factory constructing radios and who believes herself to be a cyborg, is institutionalised after cutting her wrist and connecting it with a power cord to a wall outlet in an attempt to "recharge" herself, an act that is interpreted as a suicide attempt. Her delusion is characterised by refusing to eat, (she instead licks batteries and attempts to administer electric shocks to herself,) conversing almost solely with machines and electrical appliances and obsessively listening to her transistor radio at night for instruction on how to become a better cyborg. Her apathetic mother is interviewed by the institute's head doctor, to determine the roots of Young-goon's psychosis; despite claiming ignorances of her daughter's delusion (it is later learnt she knew but was too busy to make her seek help), she reveals that Young-goon's mentally-ill grandmother had previously been institutionalised for delusions of being a mouse, a trauma that sparks Young-goon's own lapses from reality. As a result, she fantasizes frequently of finding her grandmother and seeking revenge on the "men in white" who took her away.
Il-sun, a young male patient hospitalized for anti-social behaviour and kleptomania (stemming from schizophrenia), becomes fascinated with Young-goon; he is described as having "no sympathy" for his fellow man, believes he can "steal" other people's souls/attributes, and frequently wears handmade rabbit masks. He fears that he will eventually "shrink into a dot" and is seen compulsively brushing his teeth when nervous or upset. His habit of covertly taking the traits of his fellow inmates makes him the frequent target of scorn, however is shown willingly accepting and returning certain traits to their owners after he has had his fill of them.
When Young-goon convinces Il-sun to take away her "sympathy" in order for her to be able to kill the men in white, she has a hallucination of going on a rampage, slaughtering the doctors and orderlies of the hospital. When she is given shock treatment due to her refusal to eat, she believes that she has been recharged. In reality, her physical condition begins to deteriorate rapidly, and the doctors begin force-feeding her to keep her alive. Il-sun, now wracked with sympathy for Young-goon, hatches an elaborate plan to get Young-goon to eat, convincing her that he can install a food-to-electrical-energy conversion unit (a "rice-megatron", as he calls it) in her back. After eating her first meal at the hospital, and confiding her secrets to the head doctor, Young-goon ponders the meaning of a recurring dream in which her grandmother explains to her the purpose of her existence. Interpreting the lip-read message as that she is in fact a "nuke bomb" that requires a bolt of lightning to detonate, she goes out into a horrendous storm with Il-sun, intending to use her radio's antenna as a lightning rod.
In the middle of the storm, the wind blows away the tent they are using, prompting both of them to scramble about covering the food they had brought with them. Young-goon tries to cover up the opened wine bottle they had brought with them as well, but is unable to find the cork. Hearing her cry out about the wine, Il-sun hastily grabs it from her and covers it with his pinky finger. Unknown to Young-goon, Il-sun had in fact placed the missing cork on top of the makeshift lightning rod they had constructed, thereby ensuring that they will never get hit by lightning. It reveals that Il-sun never intended for Young-goon to die despite seemingly helping to carry out Young-goon's wishes of 'detonating' and bringing about the 'world's end'. His 'helping out' was in fact his way of protecting Young-goon like the way he installed the 'rice megatron' to induce her to eat. The movie ends with the sunrise, both of them still alive and well
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