Lee Dong-jun, a member of the National Assembly who eventually rises to power as the right arm of the president while hiding his identity as a murderer, receives a message that hints at his crime 15 years ago. He tracks down the sender of the strange message – the killer is now tracking down the anonymous detective. Even amid such a crisis, the sociopathic man is unafraid to use the name of the deceased victim to hide his black money.

15 years ago, Dong-jun, an intelligent man who graduated from a prestigious law school, was an ordinary banker. He murdered a man and dumped his body in Sanmaeri Reservoir, a crime so perfectly executed that only the killer and the dead know about it. Although the murder was committed it was never caught by the authorities, meaning that is a dark figure of crime. But when Dong-jun attends the presidential inauguration as a top contributor to the election, someone sends him a message that hints at his crime from 15 years ago.

‘You must be sitting at the presidential inauguration now, while the soul of the dead is looking at you from above.;

What’s more, the message was sent to the phone secretly used by Lee Dong-jun – only three people in the world know about this phone: Lee Jeong-hyun, his son, Jae-sik, his cousin and the head of the organization for the campaign at his district, and Hinohara, the head of Nippon General Trading’s Korea office.

The sender hides his identity by changing his cell phone number and outgoing destination, and slowly suffocates Dong-jun by sending messages to his secret phone.

Dong-jun must track down the identity of the blackmailer, but his status as a public figure prevents him from doing so; even just a few hours missing from a public figure’s schedule can have significant political implications. Surrounded by political reporters and forced to spend his day full of official schedules, Dong-jun is not free to chase the blackmailer on his own. This makes him more anxious and frightened, but he must hide his personal crisis and put up a brave front.

Dong-jun, who was in charge of campaign fund management during the election, is accused of stealing 10 billion KRW and is wiretapped and closely monitored by intelligence agencies. However, Dong-jun continues to plead not guilty and discloses his schedule and everyday life as a public figure transparently. Lee Dong-jun is known as “an angel” by his fellow party members and constituents, and the investigation simply reveals that he was being generous with campaign fund expenses.

Despite being hunted down by the strange messages, Dong-jun uses his victim’s identity to hide black money as a way to evade intelligence agencies. And as a skilled and experienced politician, Dong-jun even uses his secretary, who has a bad credit record due to her extravagant spending, to hide his black money when he becomes the secretary general of his political party.

The head of the intelligence agency finally succeeds in tracking down some of Lee Dong-jun’s hidden funds, but he himself also has personal ambitions to run for the National Assembly. As a result, he signs a secret deal with Dong-jun and files a false report to the president.

The blackmailer of the messages turns out to be an unlikely figure: 15 years ago, back when he was a middle school student, the blackmailer saw a banker dump his victim’s body in Sanmaeri Reservoir. For the next 15 years, he watched the killer, Lee Dong-jun, become a member of the National Assembly and eventually become a political tycoon in the media. Although the blackmailer causes anxiety and fear for the powerful politician, he himself ends up taking Dong-jun’s bait when he succumbs to his desire to become part of the upper middle class. The blackmailer is a highly educated young man who is just starting out his career in society – this foreshadows the birth of yet another evil in the form of “Mini Lee Dong-jun.”

The killer, Lee Dong-jun, is still enjoying his powerful and immense wealth – while the life of his victim has been taken away and his corpse still lies in cold water.

Nevertheless, the author leaves hopes that the guilty will one day be brought to justice. As a skilled writer who has successfully mixed literary elements into genre fiction, how the writer illustrates this implication is aesthetically artistic.

If you do something wrong, you will be punished – this classic message is an outdated, dead metaphor that will not convince readers. Readers are sick and tired of white-collar criminals with power and money, who can walk down the streets in broad daylight even after committing felonies while being lucky enough to skirt the system and the law. This type of character, who binges on black money and creates scapegoats to get away with it, must be born with genes completely devoid of any guilt.

The ultimate dark figure of crime – no report, no dead body, no investigation, never been open to the world.

Unlike traditional crime novels where a detective or witness would track down the criminal, Sanmaeri Reservoir is unique in that it is the killer who tracks down the witness, who is also the investigator in this novel. The author finished this book over the period of ten years, based on research and experience that she acquired while working as a secretariat for a political party. Despite being a genre fiction, the book was shortlisted for multiple pure literature awards. More than anything else, the book was praised for being a masterpiece that handles social death while revealing the evil side of human nature.

Sanmaeri Reservoir was published in April 2020 and was ranked as the third-best genre novel on Kyobobook, Aladdin, and Yes24 within just two weeks after release. Readers’ book reviews continue to be posted on social media.

“I finished an entire mystery novel in just two hours! You could finish this in one sitting. The book keeps you on the edge of your seat from the very first page to the last. So exciting! You could visualize the images vividly as if you were watching a movie. The world I never knew unfolded before my eyes.”