Kongjui, who had been living alone with her father, welcomes a stepmother and a stepsister called Patchui into her life. When her father is out, the stepmother and Patchui make her do all the housework and the stepmother believes all of Patchui's lies and beats Kongjui mercilessly. When talks of marriage between Kongjui and the son of a respectable family come out one day, the stepmother does everything in her power to get Patchui married to the young man. Unaware of her stepmother's plans, Kongjui runs into the young man in the woods and the two fall in love. On the day of a party at Kongjui's uncle's house, the stepmother and Patchui leave first, leaving Kongjui to take care of all the housework before she returns home, which would take her three whole days. The pot that she has been told to fill with water has a hole and can never be filled while the work she must do cannot be done in a short time, so Kongjui starts crying. Suddenly, a Buddhist saint appears before her and does all the housework for her and gives her new clothes as well as shoes with flowers on them. Deeply grateful, she drops a shoe in the water on her way home. The young man who has returned as an official after having passed the national exam finds the shoe and starts looking for the owner