Pachinko (2022, 2024)
That rhythm sets the tone for a series that unfolds slowly and deliberately across continents and generations. Based on Min Jin Lee’s acclaimed novel, Pachinko spans nearly a century and follows a Korean family navigating Japanese colonial rule, World War II, forced migration, and generational divides. Now two seasons in, the Apple TV+ drama weaves together the lives of Sunja (played by Kim Min-ha in her youth and Youn Yuh-jung in later years), Koh Hansu (Lee Min-ho), Mozasu (Soji Arai), and Solomon (Jin Ha), among others, tracing how history is etched into the body, language, and longing of those who carry it.
At its heart, Pachinko is a story of diaspora—particularly the lives of 재일 교포 (Zainichi Koreans), ethnic Koreans who remained in Japan after colonization and faced generations of systemic discrimination. The show excels not only in emotional depth but also in its attention to language. It’s a gift for anyone drawn to the nuances of expression: Korean, Japanese, and English flow seamlessly throughout, with Busan’s regional dialect shaping Sunja’s speech (경상도 사투리) and a brief but meaningful moment of Jeju dialect (제주 방언) surfacing in a conversation between Hansu and his father. These linguistic textures are more than cultural flourishes—they’re acts of memory and resistance.
The series follows Sunja’s journey—from a teenage girl in 1910s Busan to a grandmother in 1980s Osaka. After an affair with a wealthy fish broker (Hansu) leaves her pregnant, she chooses to marry a kind pastor and follow him to Osaka, Japan. Her decision is shaped by love, but also by a need to protect her dignity. She doesn't know then that this move will bind her life to generations of sacrifice.
The metaphor of 파친코 (pachinko), the Japanese pinball game from which the series takes its name, runs deep. In the game, steel balls drop through a maze of pins, bouncing unpredictably, never quite landing where intended. For many Zainichi Koreans, this is what life has resembled—precarious, unchosen, full of risk. Hard work didn’t guarantee security. Identity came at a cost. Yet people persisted, because they had to.
The show makes this visible through its tightly drawn characters. Sunja becomes a vendor at the market, selling 김치 (kimchi) with hands that once only cooked for family. Her son Mozasu makes his fortune in pachinko parlors, those noisy spaces both frowned upon and deeply familiar. Her grandson Solomon, raised partly in the U.S., returns to Japan to climb the corporate ladder, only to realize that his roots—however distant—still shape his reflection.
Among the many richly rendered scenes, two images stand out for the way they draw history into the body—both visual and visceral.
The first appears in Season 1, during 관동 대지진 (the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923). In seconds, the city of Yokohama is reduced to ash. Buildings collapse, smoke swells, and fire rolls through the streets. Young Hansu, caught in the middle of the devastation, loses his father and his home. In the chaos that follows, false rumors lead to the targeting and killing of Koreans by Japanese mobs. Hansu escapes, but barely. That moment marks the end of his childhood and the beginning of a new self—calculated, self-sufficient, unyielding. The earthquake is a turning point not just for a character, but for the course of the entire family’s story. The sequence is stunning—swirls of fire, the gray wash of rubble, a boy running not toward safety but into survival.
The second image moves more slowly but cuts just as deep: a bowl of 흰쌀밥 (white rice), offered across generations. Just before Sunja leaves for Japan, her mother offers her 흰쌀밥—a forbidden act under Japanese occupation, when Korean-grown rice was seized for imperial use. It’s a gift of deep risk and deeper love. Later, in Osaka, Sunja’s sister-in-law Kyunghee serves her another bowl—plain but full of care, a welcome in a foreign land. Decades later, in the 1980s, Sunja visits the home of an elderly Korean woman in Osaka—someone who refuses to sell her house to the real estate firm where Solomon works. As they share a meal, the woman serves white rice. Sunja eats, pauses, and recognizes the taste immediately. “This is Korean rice,” she says—not a simple observation, but a moment of recognition. The land is not hers, the house is not hers, but the flavor is. And with that taste (우리땅 쌀맛), something returns. A self she never allowed to be lost.
These moments—earthquake and rice, rupture and rootedness—define the emotional architecture of Pachinko. The push and pull of history is constant, but within that tension, small acts carry enormous weight.
And then, there is 김치 (kimchi).
In Osaka’s marketplace, Sunja begins again. She ferments and sells what she knows. The scent is strong—bold, unmistakably Korean. It draws stares. It carries stigma. But it also carries her forward. In a place that offers little welcome, the act of making kimchi becomes more than livelihood. It is memory, resistance, and a way to say: I remember who I am. What once brought shame becomes a symbol of survival. What was meant to be hidden becomes a source of pride.
These threads—flavor, memory, grief, endurance—are captured in the show’s lush visual language. The cinematography gleams with saturated blues, ember-like reds, and dusky light. Every frame holds emotional weight without forcing it. And Nico Muhly’s score, spare and elegiac, moves like breath through time, gently stitching together the ruptures that define the characters’ lives.
By the time we return to the dancing corridors of the pachinko parlor, the scene carries a different weight. The rhythm is the same, the neon lights still pulse, but the movement feels fuller—infused with everything we’ve come to know. These aren’t just characters performing joy; they are survivors, dreamers, keepers of memory. Their joy has been paid for. It carries grief, resilience, and the refusal to disappear. They are not dancing to escape the past. They are dancing with it.
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