Pachinko: Season 1

Based on: 2017 novel of the same name by Min Jin Lee 

Created by: Soo Hugh

Directed by: Kogonada & Justin Chon

Starring:

 Youn Yuh-jung, Kim Min-ha, and Yu-na as adult, teenage, and young Kim Sunja;

Jin Ha and Yoon Kyung-ho as Solomon Baek;

 Soji Arai (Baek Mozasu), Han Jun-woo (Baek Yoseb), Jeong In-ji (Yangjin), Jung Eun-chae (Kyunghee), Lee Min-ho (Koh Hansu)

This one's a bit harder for me to review because I didn't understand it very well 😅

As I've mentioned before in this blog, I have a hard time keeping track of characters when there's an ensemble cast, and especially names when I first start a series. Time jumps are hard for me, too, especially if they're frequent and not made obvious with captions. Unfortunately, this series had all of that, with the extra obstacle of a foreign language with subtitles the entire time. I did my best to keep up, but.... it didn't work too well. 

Pachinko had several main characters who looked fairly similar (to my Caucasian eyes) and told a story over three, I think, different time periods, and I simply couldn't keep track of which characters belonged to which time. (Besides the obvious Sunja who was at very different ages.) Mostly because my main focus was reading the subs fast enough to keep up! 

Sunja declines a marriage proposal before she leaves Korea

Still, the show very much kept my interest. I enjoyed hearing Japanese and Korean spoken side-by-side and that helped me pick up the differences. I was also very interested in the real-world history the series had to offer: it's about the Japanese occupation of Korea around the 1920s. It tells the tale of Sunja, a Korean woman fighting for survival and a life during the occupation, and the different parts of her life during 1915, 1920, and 1990. (Er, those years are an estimate; I was never fully clear on it.) 

Sunja endures some culture shock as she arrives in a more metropolitan Japan

Since the show is based on these real events, I loved seeing the depiction of the occupation, almost like a documentary. That was the main draw of the show for me. I loved seeing the dramatization of how the occupation may have felt to the Koreans and to see the focus of one woman's life through it. I also enjoyed seeing how life looked for a young woman in that country at that time--what did they do? How were they treated? What kind of things did they have to put up with and what privileges might they have enjoyed? As I expected, it wasn't usually very pretty. 

Elderly Sunja discusses her past with the businessman hoping to purchase her home

What I did catch of the story was still compelling. A young Sunja declines a marriage proposal because she realizes there are strings attached, and she wouldn't be free. She flees to Japan to seek a better life and stays with her extended family, where she's forced to defy gender expectations and sexism to repay debts and earn money. In the future timeline, an elderly Sunja, still living in Japan, is asked to sell her old home in the city so a huge corporation can purchase the land and expand. Despite huge pressure, she refuses, taking the opportunity to reflet on her past. 

I was impressed to read more recently that the series was renewed for a second season. I see on Wikipedia that multiple sequels of this book were published, so it seems they have plenty of story to go for! Hopefully, I'll be able to retain a better grasp of the second season when it airs!