Diary of a Murderer

Kim Young-ha

2 ideas

1. Retired killer guards daughter while forgetting

   Byeong-su Kim, a seventy-year-old former veterinarian in a provincial Korean town, killed people for decades and stopped, by his own account, when hope of greater pleasure vanished; he was never suspected, and locals know him as an amateur poet. Developing Alzheimer's, he becomes convinced that Park Ju-tae, a young man with a hunter's eyes and a Jeep, is a new killer stalking his adopted daughter Eun-hee, and he plans one last killing to protect her. The ending reveals that his reading of Ju-tae, Eun-hee, and the recent murders rested on failing memory.

2. Self-surveillance through notes and recordings

   As his memory fails, the narrator keeps a diary, notes, and tape recordings so his future self can act on what his present self knows. The records only preserve what he believed when he wrote them, so errors become permanent instructions that he cannot check against lived memory. External memory does not correct a deteriorating mind. It can harden that mind's mistakes into evidence.

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