Prisoner No. 645

Prisoner No. 645 is a historical novel by the Korean writer Lee Jung-Myung, originally published as The Investigation. The Chinese edition, translated by You Xinxin, was published by Hunan Literature and Art Publishing House in February 2015 as part of the Boji Tianjuan · Foreign Literature Library series. The story is set in Korea under Japanese colonial rule during World War II, when many intellectuals who preached independence and freedom were imprisoned in Fukuoka and subjected to brutal treatment. One of them is the poet Yun Dong-ju, whose prisoner number is 645. No. 645 uses the chance to write letters home on behalf of fellow inmates to smuggle secret messages between the lines, step by step testing the limits of what the censor will tolerate—and the high walls of the forbidden zone of thought. Sugiyama, the officer responsible for censoring the letters, is at first a cold cog in the system, but is gradually drawn in by No. 645's words and poems, until he is willing to break the rules and risk himself simply to keep reading those lines. Then one day Sugiyama is found dead in the prison, and the only clue left on him is a scrap of paper in his breast pocket bearing a poem. A new investigation begins, and the mystery surrounding the poems, the letters and the death closes in layer by layer, drawing out an even more chilling truth. With the prison—a closed space—as its stage, the novel places censor and censored, oppression and resistance, literature and human nature at the same interrogation table, combining the pace of a suspense story with a heavy reflection on colonial history. Many chapter titles are taken from lines of poetry and literary allusions, so that the words themselves become tools of escape and a mirror reflecting the human heart.