After unwittingly stealing money from a cartel, a cash-strapped professor finds the only way to save his broken family is by working as a drug courier.

Based in Shinmiyangyo, or the U.S. expedition to Korea in the late 19th century, Mr. Sunshine tells the story of a Korean boy born into a family of a house servant running away to board an American warship, later to return to his homeland as a U.S. marine officer. He ironically falls in love with an aristocrat’s daughter and discovers the dark scheme to colonize the country that he once ran away from.