Mukden Diary

In the spring of 1764, people from Uiju, a Korean frontier town, killed Manchu soldiers in front of the Palisade that closes off Manchuria. Shenyang demands the culprits. Kim Jong-jeong, a councillor of the Ministry of Rites, is ordered by the king to leave at once, without waiting for Beijing's reply.

So begins a strange mission. In the rain, the royal investigator travels the road to Uiju, lingers in Pyongyang, weeps for his father before a stele in Jeongju, then crosses the Yalu with eleven prisoners. By the roadside a coffin is opened so that the corpse can be examined. Beyond the Palisade, which he dismisses as child's play, come the mountain passes, the temples of Guan Yu, the white pagoda of Liaoyang and the sun rising over the plain.

He enters Shenyang on the anniversary of the death of the last Ming emperor. The promised joint inquiry was never authorised: banished to a tent in the courtyard of the Ministry of Punishments, Kim watches the interpreters rewrite the statements, sees the accused put to torture, then finds the door shut. For fifty days he observes the Manchu capital, its palace, its Eight Banners and its customs, with the stern eye of a scholar still loyal to the Ming.

Kept day by day, this journal tells of a small kingdom's trial of strength with Qianlong's empire at the height of its power. Will Kim manage to uphold his king's dignity?