Min Jin Lee’s multi-generational story Pachinko took the literary world by storm when it was released in 2017. He appeared on the 75 best-of lists, was a National Book Award finalist, and we included on former US President Barack Obama must-read. ‘collection. The great story of sacrifice, injustice, and opposition is told by four generations of a Korean family, confronted by Sunja Baek, who guided readers on a journey from Yeongdo in 1910 to Osaka in 1931 to New York and Tokyo in 1989.
Think Dickens or Tolstoy – but with yakuza and pinball parlors (more on that later). Now the novel is on screen – via the high-budget, stunning Apple TV + adaptation and features an amazing cast of famous names (including Oscar-winner Yuh-Jung Youn) and breakout stars. Lee was not involved in the adaptation – which left some of the book’s fans nervous. But reviews so far have been well-received, with the series being described as “South Korea’s epic high like nothing else on TV” and “the bear’s story of family tolerance and women’s empowerment.”
Three women are sitting at a small table in a hut in a village. Their attention span was lit by candlelight. Pachinko is about a woman “[with] there is no safety net, forced to move to a country that is not your own, and figuring out how to protect your children and put food on the table, “said showrunner Soo Hugh. (Source: Apple TV +). Pachinko pivots around the world of Sunja, and brought us from his childhood in a fishing village in Japanese-occupied Korea around 1915 through a star-crossing romance with wealthy bad-boy Hansu, to marriage and a relocation to Japan – where young families struggle to build a new life in the face of endemic anti-Korean racism, and see their positive rise and fall against the post-war period and then the post-war economic boom.
Lee spent more than 20 years conceiving, writing and remodeling Pachinko. A turning point came when he and his family moved to Tokyo in 2007: “I met all these people who were like Solomon, the Koreans and the Japanese, the third or fourth generation, and polite, well-dressed. and very well spoken. But they didn’t tell you anything, and they were very boring, ”Lee told ABC RN’s The Book Show.
