Unlike Lee’s book, the show mixes the timelines of Book 1 and Book 3 with Minha Kim portraying a young Sunja and Youn Yuh-jung playing the older version. Season 2 picks up with older versions of Sunja’s two sons Noa and Mozasu and the start of World War II.
Those in need of a refresher on what happened in Season 1 of Pachinko can read on for a recap.
A Family Will Endure
The show opens with Sunja’s mother (Inji Jeong), who visits a Korean shaman woman to reverse a curse she believes has fallen on her and her husband Hoonie (Lee Dae-ho). Her husband has a cleft-lip deformity, which was seen as negative in society in Korea. This story takes place five years after Japan annexed Korea which led to a 35-year occupation of the country. Yangin, Sunja’s mother, had given birth to three sons who all didn’t make it to the age of one before she gave birth to Sunja (Jeon Yu-na).
Intercut with scenes of Sunja’s birth, the show flashes forward to New York City in 1989, where a grown-up Solomon (Jin Ha) works at American bank Shiffley’s, where he anticipates a promotion to Vice President. Solomon is Sunja’s grandson, son of her younger son Mozasu (Soji Arai), and Shiffley’s denies Solomon his promotion in favor of one more year of him working at a branch in Tokyo. Back in 1915, Sunja grows up close to her father, and she is not afraid to haggle at a fish market or confront a fisherman when he puts her parents and their Yeongdo boarding house in danger with anti-Japanese sentiment. Nine years after Sunja’s father dies of sickness, Koh Hansu (Lee Minho) enters the picture as an overseeing figure in the market Sunja frequents. He notices her right away.
Sunja and Hansu’s Love Affair
Hansu saved Sunja from three Japanese men who took her into a closet and seemingly tried to rape her. She offers to wash his shirt the next day at a cove where she does laundry if he’ll bring it. They get to know each other as Hansu explains he grew up in Japan before coming to Korea. He too, is Korean, and there are big differences between the pair as Sunja can’t read while Hansu can, and Sunja’s social stature is lower on the ladder than Hansu’s. They have sex at the end of episode 2.
Minha Kim as teenage Sunja and Lee Minho as Koh Hansu in ‘Pachinko.’
Sunja gets pregnant, but when she tells Hansu, expecting him to marry her, he tells her he can’t do that. He already has a wife and three daughters in Osaka, Japan. He does tell her that their child will be well taken care of even though he cannot be her husband. Sunja doesn’t want his help if he can’t marry her, and she runs away to confess the news to her mother later. Hansu continues to remain involved in Sunja’s life throughout the first season of the show.
Isak Arrives in Busan
Isak (Steve Sang-Hyun Noh), a Korean pastor, arrives in the Yeongdo District of Busan, South Korea very ill. He stumbles to the boarding house, bumping into Hansu who is leaving the cove where he was meeting up with Sunja. Isak falls to the floor once he arrives, and Sunja and her mother nurse him back to health. He overhears Sunja’s confession of her pregnancy to her mother.
Later, when he goes into town with Suja, he first suggests she give up the child to another family, but she resolutely says she will keep the baby. He then subtly hints that he would marry her if she could, in time, learn to care for someone else and move to Japan with him to start over in her life. Hansu confronts Isak, at the tailor when Isak gets a new suit for his nuptials, and the priest that marries them shames Sunja for getting pregnant outside of marriage. Yangin wants to make the moment special, so she goes to the market and begs a vendor for white rice, which is a luxurious meal for them, and she cooks Sunja and Isak a feast before they leave to join Isak’s brother Yoseb (Han Joon-Woo) and Yoseb’s wife Kyunghee (Jung Eun-chae) in Osaka, Japan. This was in 1931.
Solomon’s Effort to Get Promoted
Meanwhile, in the 1980s timeline, Solomon suggested to his superiors that he could close a major deal for a piece of land that just needed one last property to sell for development. He is certain that he can sympathize with the Korean landowner (Park Hye-jin) stalling the process as she clings to her house on the plot of land. He brings Sunja to meet her, and Sunja recognizes a detail in the white rice the landowner makes — that it was grown in Korea. The woman’s lawyers call Shiffley’s to tell them she will sign over the land for a million dollars after Solomon suggests to his boss Tom Andrews (Jimmi Simpson) that they make her an offer she can’t refuse.
Just as Shiffley’s is about to celebrate, Solomon gets a call from his childhood friend Hana (Mari Yamamoto), who has gone missing. Hana’s mother Etsuko (Kaho Minami) dates Solomon’s father Mozasu. Hana has called Solomon before, but he tries to trace where she could be calling from. Later as the woman appears to sign the deal, this scene is intercut with Sunja leaving Yeongdo for Japan in the hull of a ship. A popular singer switches from classical opera to a low-belting Korean song after she meets Sunja before she boards. The old woman asks Solomon if she were his grandmother, what would he tell her, and he says he would tell her not to sign the paperwork. The deal is off, and work is about to get tough for Solomon.
Older Sunja Returns to Korea to Spread Kyunghee’s Ashes
The older version of Sunja decides to spread Kyunghee’s (Felice Choi) ashes since she always wanted to go back home, but couldn’t. Kyunghee died in episode 3 of cancer. Sunja goes to Korea with Mozasu, and they also locate her father’s grave as well as Bokhee (Kim Young-ok) one of the two women who worked for Sunja’s mother at the boarding house and looked after Yangin when Sunja left.
Younger Sunja Adjusts To Ikaino and Yoseb, Helps Pay Off a Debt
Living with Isak’s brother Yoseb presents challenges to Sunja, as he is suspicious about her motives to marry Isak. He observes that she is farther along in her pregnancy than expected, so he suspects she may have trapped Isak into marriage. Kyunghee proves more welcoming to Sunja as she makes her white rice on her arrival and eases Sunja into the household chores because of Sunja’s pregnancy.
When two men come to the front door one day demanding payment for a loan that Yoseb took out against the house for Sunja’s passage to Japan, Kyunghee frets, but Sunja knows right away to go pawn off the watch that Hansu gave her to get money and pay off the whole loan. Kyunghee worries about what Yoseb will think, but Sunja’s determination accomplishes the task. Her mother almost gave her some precious earrings to have in case of an emergency like this, but when Sunja showed her the watch, she kept them. The moment of their goodbye was very tender as Yangin gave Sunja a pep talk and advice, but Sunja got really sad before they left.
Yoseb’s ego takes a hit when he realizes what Sunja has done.
Sunja Gives Birth
Right as Yoseb storms out in frustration, Sunja’s water breaks. Kyunghee does her best to support Sunja in giving birth, but the nosy neighbor who raises pigs barges in to complain about the noise before getting down to help. Isak goes to find Yoseb and brings him back just after Sunja bears the baby boy. She asks Yoseb, as the head of the household, to name their son. He chooses Noa, based on the Biblical figure who saw a new world and hailed new possibility.
Solomon Finds Hana
Hana called Solomon claiming she didn’t want to die alone, and he found her. It turned out she had AIDS, and Solomon got her to a hospital, but she only had so long to live. There was a flashback before this when they were younger, and Hana tried to convince Solomon to steal something, but he got caught by the shop’s owner. This small crime, a first offense for Solomon, landed him in police custody until a phone call from “a very powerful friend” asked to have him released. Mozasu then decided to send Solomon to school in America, and this is when he had to leave Hana behind.
Sunja, Mozasu and Etsuko took turns caring for Hana until she died, and Solomon made a deal with Mamoru Yoshi (Louis Ozawa) to get hospital heads turned while they ran Hana outside to be in fresh air while she died. Yoshi first approached Mozasu when he lost his job at Shiffley’s, and he suggested they go into the pachinko market together in locations other than local ones since Mozasu is in that business. Mozasu took out a loan to open another parlor with the enhanced slot machines. Solomon originally tried to pitch Shiffley’s approaching Yoshi, who seemed to want to also develop the land.
Hansu’s Backstory
Another unique angle the show takes vs. the book is in developing Hansu’s backstory in a standalone episode, the seventh in Season 1. The penultimate episode follows a younger Hansu growing up with his father and tutoring an American boy. He is offered the chance to go to America with the family, as the son is supposed to attend Yale in the fall, but the Kanto Earthquake struck right before their planned departure, killing Hansu’s father and the American Holmes family. Hansu confirmed their deaths when he found the wife’s dead body and took the watch that he later gave Sunja . In the middle timeline, Hansu bought the watch back after Sunja pawned it off, and he gave it back to her, and she then gave it to Solomon. Without reason to go to America, Hansu stayed and started working for his father’s old yakuza — or Japanese Organized Crime — boss, contributing to the rumors surrounding his reputation when he comes to the fish market at the beginning of the series.
The quake struck the Kanto region in 1923, and over 100,000 lives were lost. Hansu also witnessed a brutal burning of Koreans running from the Japanese soldiers, who found them hiding in a barn and razed the structure to kill the Korean men out of suspicion.
Isak Was Arrested
Right after young Mosazu’s doljabi, or Korean choosing ceremony, in which a one-year-old child is presented with options like a red thread, coins, a bow and arrow, etc. to determine their future, Isak was arrested for a political crime. Young Noa chased after him before the Japanese officials took him away. Noa’s birthday celebration involved his selection of the red thread, meaning he would live a long life. Noa joked that Mozasu should choose coins because he has a “beggar in his belly.”
Yoseb lost his job at the factory due to affiliation with the political crime of Isak. Sunja met with a couple who influenced his leanings, and Noa had to translate between them. Determined to take care of her sons and in-laws, Sunja decided to start selling home-made kimchi at a market near the train station, ending the series on a hopeful note as she found a spot to sell and raised her voice to joyfully show customers the Korean specialty.
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