Yoo Hai-jin

On the eve of the founding of the Joseon Dynasty, an unprecedented robbery shocks the nation-in-waiting: a whale has swallowed the Emperor's Royal Seal, and a bounty is placed on its retrieval. Now, every infamous gang of thieves, thugs, pirates, and government agents take to the seas, battling the elements, creatures of the deep, and each other to possess the mother of all rewards.  

In this powerful true story set in 1980, a down-on-his-luck taxi driver from Seoul is hired by a foreign journalist who wants to go to the town of Gwangju for the day. Instead, they arrive to find a city under siege by the military government, with the citizens, led by a determined group of college students, rising to demand freedom. What began as an easy fare became a life-or-death struggle amid the Gwangju Uprising, a critical event in modern South Korea.