The Investigation by Jung-myung Lee

promised to send him money and buy a passage to Manchuria after the bombing. But the
bomb Choi lobbed into the crowd didn’t go off; he was arrested on the scene. The Special Higher Police caught up with Kim, who was wandering the Japanese islands without any escape funds. The
prosecutor sought execution for Choi, but the Tokyo court sentenced him to life imprisonment. What they didn’t know was how tenacious Choi was in biding his time. Choi wasn’t angry at
Kim. It wasn’t the man’s fault; it was the damn books he’d read. Inaccurate knowledge acted like a noose. If Kim was wrong, it was for the audacity of thinking he could change the
world with a couple of books.
    Choi’s glares intimidated even the guards. He reeked of the wild. He was poised to attack on a moment’s notice. Nobody knew what he would do next. When Sugiyama Dozan came to the
prison fresh from Manchuria, Choi instinctively recognized his own untamed nature in the guard, and Sugiyama detected the Manchurian dust on Choi. The prison was a small, enclosed world and the two
had to fight over this limited territory. Sugiyama called Choi into the interrogation room every few days. He had plenty of reasons – Choi had mumbled his answer to a question, he was late
for assembly, he stared straight into the guard’s eyes. Sugiyama’s club would ram into Choi’s eyelid, crack open his forehead, break his teeth. With eyes swollen shut, Choi stared
down the pain. He had only one weapon at his disposal – his endurance.
    ‘How would you like to die?’ Sugiyama would ask as he pressed his boot down on Choi’s neck.
    Choi would grin, flashing his broken teeth. ‘I don’t want to die. If I die, I lose.’
    Solitary confinement awaited him after each interrogation. It was as dark and quiet there as the inside of a coffin. Three days would pass. The cut near his eye would heal and the bruises would
fade. Choi would go to the window, thinking he would suffocate from the stench. A weak wind blew through the ventilation window under the toilet. He would grip the bars as a wonderful scent wafted
in – of life and hope, tender new shoots, overgrown spring grass, the scent of a young mountain bird’s feathers.
    One day something occurred to him as he walked out of solitary into the blinding sun. It wasn’t enough simply to survive. He had to do something. First, he bulked up his weakened body. He
began to do chin-ups on the bars of his cell and toned his muscles by doing squats and push-ups. When he was outside he walked around the yard to strengthen his shrunken heart. But his newfound
focus only lasted a fortnight. He punched another prisoner and attacked a guard. What waited for him again was the smelly solitary cell. One week later he spat through his blood-crusted lips as he
walked out of the cell. It was after this trip to solitary that he determined on new attempts at escape.
    The first time he shoved the guard on duty and hurtled towards the wall. As he struggled to clamber up the high wall, a guard reached him and beat him. It was clumsy, an afterthought. It was too
ridiculous even to call it an escape attempt, but the punishment was severe: ten days in solitary. The second time he volunteered for the night-shift work team and sneaked out of the workroom. He
was caught climbing over the back wall of the prison. The warden was woken at home and rushed back to the prison. He viewed the entire incident as a challenge to his authority and personally
interrogated Choi. Even a failed attempt deserved a summary conviction. But Choi wasn’t executed; his stay in solitary lengthened to a fortnight, then a month. The curious part was that while
most people couldn’t make it out of their first solitary confinement alive, Choi walked out on his own two feet every time. Oddly, he tried to escape a third, fourth and fifth time, even
though he hadn’t fully recovered his strength. His attempts kept evolving and were as entertaining as a