Anna Sawai stars in a scene from Pachinko on Apple TV+.The Associated Press
Almost 600 adult scripted TV series debuted in 2022. That’s more television than even the most committed viewer could watch in a year. So it’s understandable if Pachinko, the Apple TV+ series based on the National Book Award finalist novel by Min Jin Lee, wasn’t on your radar. But with the second season now streaming, it should be.
On paper, Pachinko is a saga of survival that follows a Korean immigrant family across four generations. On screen, it’s one of the most beautiful pieces of television in recent years. Creator Soo Hugh has brought the bestselling novel to life with a complex narrative told in three languages and cinematography that films across several countries – including Vancouver in the first season and Toronto in Season 2. The result is an intimate portrayal of characters from 1910 to 1989 that resonates on a sweeping level.
“That is the heart and soul of Pachinko: How do you create the intimate epic?” says Hugh. “How do you tell something huge, but in the language of close-ups? Our guiding light is making sure everything is from our characters’ subjective point of view.”
At the centre of the story is Sunja, played by Minha Kim in the younger years and by Youn Yuh-jung as an older woman. Young Sunja grows up in Korea under Japanese rule before a love affair with a mobster figure named Koh Hansu (Lee Min-ho) sends her to Japan. There, she raises Korean children in a country filled with prejudice, relying on love and hope to anchor a better future.
In the 1980s, the elder Sunja has now raised her grandson, Solomon Baek (Jin Ha). She has survived World War II, poverty and the Japanese occupation of her home, and as a result she can’t quite connect with Solomon and the pressures he feels to succeed in her shadow.
“Many of us have experience with something like that,” says Ha, “of wanting to break free of expectations that our parents or parental figures or grandparents might have placed on us, or ones that we’ve imposed on ourselves because of our situation.”
“As generations go by, you always hope that your kids do better than you and sometimes the easiest way to mark that is by wealth,” adds Hugh. “It’s not the best way, but it does seem like the easiest way. In our show, our characters mistake that wealth for happiness and success to their detriment.”
At its core, this is a story about identity and erasure. It explores the power of language and culture in keeping the past alive, and the characters speak English, Japanese and Korean depending on the context. For a character like Sunja, who grows up without learning to read or write, communication also comes in the form of the kimchi she ferments to sell at the market or the food she cooks for her family.
Yuh-Jung Youn appears in a scene from Pachinko on Apple TV+.The Associated Press
Meanwhile, there are time jumps to contrast and compare generational trauma and the way Koreans survived during a dark period of history. Pachinko incorporates affecting world events like the war and the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, a devastating, 7.9 magnitude quake that also resulted in a 40-foot-high tsunami and fires that cumulatively killed 140,000 people.
The quake, which occurs toward the end of Season 1, serves as an origin story for Koh Hansu.
“Before Hansu was able to fully define who he was and create his own self-image and self-identity, he lost his father, who was the closest person to him and his greatest source of support,” says Min-ho. “At that point, it brought a lot of turmoil to his life and he became lost, in terms of what he should live for and what he should exist for.”
In Season 2, the war forces Sunja and her family out of their home and into the country, where they pick up manual labour and are forced to rely on unsavoury connections to survive. They aren’t directly in the battlefield, but the effects of their circumstances are felt for years to come.
“Just like in the real world, in our lives, big things are happening around us, but we don’t talk about it all the time. We just have to live,” says Hugh.
The backdrop may be sometimes dark but Pachinko’s greatest strength is its ability to celebrate the everyday moments of joy that make a life. A bowl of rice can connect a character to their childhood, a man dancing in the rain is a liberating expression of identity, or that first sip of a margarita is a reminder that we all have so much more to experience in the world.
“Sunja learns how to find hope and the light despite all of these difficult circumstances,” Kim shares. “She knew that in finding hope she could thrive. She tries to find her own joy in her family and love.”
That balance is encapsulated in the show’s opening credits, which blend historical photos with characters from all time periods joyfully dancing in a pachinko parlour. It’s a reminder that life is full of ups and downs, and while we may be in charge of writing our own story, sometimes life, like those pachinko slots, is fixed by circumstance and luck. Yet everyone must navigate the hand they’re dealt, and true wealth comes when you find the moments of joy, family and love that make it worth the journey.
“Some things in life are fixed, some things are unfair, some things are systemic, and yet also at the same time, luck has a huge part of how things turn out,” adds Hugh. “And I think our stories prove that point.”