Its like they originally didn't spec a long enough travel shock, so instead of fitting a better shock they altered the frame to fool you into believing the shock had compressed more than it actually had :?
Weird but very interesting, get it built and report on its ride
The frame number for this is a slightly strange format, as it seems to have more characters than usual, but I think we can say that it is a Hodaka built frame from 1995. Nice to see old threads like this still contain useful information.
Hodaka 'K' indicates a September frame, so quite possibly an early 1996 bike as already identified.