After reading “Pachinko” by Min Jin Lee two years ago, I was pleasantly surprised to hear that it was getting a live-action drama adaptation on AppleTV last year. At first, I was scared that they wouldn’t be able to successfully portray the complicated layers of the many themes of the novel, but, after watching the series a few weeks ago I was pleasantly surprised. I was consistently amazed by the script, the show, and their ability to make those themes shine through.
The show drifted from the source material, adding in new storylines and backstories. Though this would usually be a dealbreaker for me, these additions only served to deepen characterization and make more apparent how, while everything changed, simultaneously nothing changed at all.
An example of change in the story was Koh Hansu’s backstory, told in the penultimate episode. Hansu plays a pivotal role in both the show and the book, is the one to change Sunja’s life at the start, and the one that comes to her aid from the shadows later on in life. When I read the novel, I never found Hansu to be a likable character. He took advantage of people, lying, and resorting to violence when it benefitted him. While that did not change in the show, the addition of the catastrophic Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 and its effects forces the viewer to consider where he’s coming from.
Another change from the source material was the addition of a character named Naomi, Solomon’s coworker in Tokyo. Naomi is often overlooked by her coworkers. In one scene, a man asks Solomon for instructions on something that Naomi had already written him a memo for. Her experiences in the workplace, in comparison to Solomon’s ease of ability to gain the respect of others, reveal much about the presence of sexism in society in 1989.
When the story switches to Sunja’s life as a young woman in Japan in the early 1900s, similar encounters with sexism occur. For example, when she sells a pocket watch to pay off the loan debt of her brother-in-law, he grows angry, and his main concern is being viewed as a man who depends on the support of women to pay off his debts. This recurring theme of sexism, displayed throughout the series in all parts reveals how society has not changed from the past to modern times.
Language and the barriers it creates are also cleverly displayed in the show. Raised on a small fishing island in Busan, Sunja grew up speaking Korean, never learning how to read and write. Consequently, whenever someone speaks Japanese to Sunja, the English subtitles turn off, making us feel just as lost and confused as she is. Even when her young son, Noa, is translating for her, the subtitles are only shown when Korean is spoken, the only language Sunja has known until she has no choice but to learn some Japanese. Solomon, Sunja’s privileged grandson, is shown to be very different. He is constantly and effortlessly switching between English, Japanese, and Korean, adapting to the situation and the people around him.
To me, this struggle was an aspect of the characters’ experiences that was difficult to understand in print form, especially because the entire book is written in English. With the lack of subtitles in the show, the sounds of a foreign language close in on us, leaving us grasping onto what we may already know or think we recognize in the syllables.
While watching the show, I had to make sure tissues were always on standby. The actors expressed their sadness and fear in ways that were extremely moving. Reading the novel, I sobbed the hardest when Sunja’s mother sent her off to Japan. Even though they changed the dialogue for that scene in the show, I found myself sobbing in the same way. When Sunja’s mother, played by Jeong Inji, tried to hold back her tears, it moved me more than any show has in a while.
One of my favorite parts of the show is the opening sequence, which shows childhood photos of the cast and historical footage from Japanese-occupied Korea in the 1900s. The cast of Sunja’s family, including Hansu, then dances happily to “Let’s Live For Today” by the Grass Roots in the aisles of a colorful pachinko parlor. This is a stark contrast to their lives which are filled with so many painful events. In my opinion, the inclusion of real childhood photos reminds the viewer of the reality that the characters go through.
The show brings the viewer back to this reality again at the very end of the series, where there are interviews with women who went through similar experiences as Sunja. Most of them were living in Japan, having never returned after being displaced from Korea by Japanese occupation. They became young wives and mothers and were forced to work to survive. Many also had no idea what was happening to the family they had left behind, just like Sunja when she left her mother and the boarding house. The thoughtful addition of their shared experiences allows the viewer to see the ways “Pachinko” has successfully shown us an example of life during the Japanese occupation of Korea in the 1900s.
Even though the show has hardly adapted the full span of the novel, the small portion it does manage to cover was wonderfully done. In April, AppleTV announced that “Pachinko” will have a second season. No release date has been announced yet, but I am extremely excited to see Min Jin Lee’s beautiful work continue to be adapted in live-action. If you haven’t watched the show, or read the book, I urge you to go on and delve into the world of “Pachinko.”
