Aimless Bullet is Yu Hyun-mok’s most exemplary work and a key work of Korean realist cinema. The film captures the collective anxiety of post-war Korea through clerk Cheol-ho and his family. A commercial failure upon its initial release, it was soon banned by the military government, finally receiving its due recognition when presented at the San Francisco International Film Festival in 1963. Aimless Bullet is not simply an anti-war film, rather it extends to the wider context of human existence in all its chaotic glory.