In the Russia-Ukraine war, certain forces from the United States, NATO, and South Korea fabricate fake North Korean prisoners of war and orchestrate a scheme claiming they wish to defect to South Korea. - This is how the story of this novel begins.

Every war begins with a sentence before the sound of gunfire.
And the moment you decide to believe that sentence, it becomes a weapon.

Black Winter is about a fake prisoner, who has never even been to North Korea, claiming to have expressed an intention to defect to South Korea from the gray frontlines of Kyiv, Ukraine.
This story began with a single manipulated sentence. In the snowstorm of Kyiv, Ukraine, the nationalities of two captured men are changed, their pasts erased, and they are forcibly branded as 'North Korean soldiers.' This is not a simple lie, but the narrative of an international conspiracy meticulously designed to push the Korean Peninsula into the abyss of war.

Black Winter is a grand reversal drama presented by Mukmyeong (Kwon Jin-oh), South Korea's leading espionage political thriller author. The author delves into the fragile dignity of humans reduced to mere numbers on the great chessboard of powerful nations. In the harsh reality where even personal identity is manipulated for the convenience of the state and the interests of vast systems, the author vividly portrays those who struggle in the darkness to protect only the truth and human dignity.

Park Kyung-soo, of the overseas branch of the Korean National Intelligence Service, carries the painful memory of 2007 in Afghanistan, where information was deliberately ignored and twenty-six citizens were kidnapped. His wife, Lee Soo-kyung, a diplomat, has since held the conviction 'never to lie for the country,' and begins to pursue the dangerous clue 'Winter Office' leaked by local Ukrainian intelligence officer Kovalenko.

However, what they face is not simply internal corruption or the abuse of power by a single nation. Beyond that stands the strategic intent of a superpower across the Pacific, and an internal 'cleaner' force blindly carrying out its orders. They call lies 'convenience,' disguise silence as 'strategy,' and extend the bad habit of consuming citizens as 'materials' beyond their own borders.

This novel goes beyond the tension of espionage chases to pose fundamental questions to us.
"Does loving your country mean loving even the lies it wants to tell?"

Park Kyung-soo and Lee Soo-kyung risk their lives to answer that question in their own ways. One with documents and evidence, the other with voices overheard in silence, and both by never betraying these three things: conscience, loyalty, and love.

At the end of winter, what they discover is not a single incident, but a dangerous habit we have all carelessly agreed to. The habit of instinctively bowing our heads the moment 'silence becomes strategy.' Black Winter is the noble record of two people who shattered that habit head-on, and a vivid warning for our era that is not yet over.