‘Pachinko’ Is A Rare Gem Of A Series About One Woman’s Resilient Spirit

Pachinko is a mechanical game popular in Japan and like any in-house betting game, the odds favor the house. In the Apple TV series Pachinko, the game offers one Korean family a chance to defy the odds, while also serving as a metaphor for the seemingly random events that shape their destiny. Based on Min Jin Lee’s bestselling novel of the same name, Pachinko tells the story of Sunja, a quietly resilient young woman who helps her mother run a boarding house during the Japanese occupation of Korea. The young Sunja, played by rookie actress Kim Min-ha, lives an uneventful life punctuated by trips to the market.

It’s there she meets the new fish broker, Koh Hansu, played by Lee Min-ho. Wearing impeccably tailored clothes and conveying a sense of authority, he stands out among the bedraggled crowd. He’s Korean but he works for the Japanese, which means he wields power in her occupied village.

Is Pachinko a love story? Yes and no. Sunja is willingly seduced by Hansu, not realizing he’s married, but she refuses to be his mistress when she becomes pregnant. Instead, she marries a visiting minister, who takes pity on her, realizing how much she will suffer as a single mother.

Sunja’s new husband, Isaak Baek, played by Steve Sang-hyun Noh, takes her to Japan, where he will lead a Korean church. More than 700,000 Koreans moved to Japan during the occupation. Considered second class citizens, these Korean immigrants had few options and many found work in pachinko parlors. Sunja and her family do what they can to survive. Life would be a lot easier if she would accept help from Hansu, who becomes a powerful player in the Yakuza.

Rather than follow the novel’s story in a linear fashion, the series contrasts the Korean diaspora with the family’s story a few decades later, mirroring the early fate of Sunja with that of her grandson Solomon, played by Korean American actor Jin Ha. Solomon works in New York and Tokyo, crafting financial deals that can be as precarious as games of chance. Solomon thinks he’s escaped the prejudice that hampered his family, but it’s not that simple.

This tale of love and sacrifice is meticulously directed by Korean American filmmakers Kogonada (After Yang, Columbus) and Justin Chon (Blue Bayou, Gook), with a surprising singularity of vision. Although the directors split episodes between them, the plot seamlessly takes viewers from a small fishing village to the cutthroat boardrooms of 1980s Tokyo, contrasting how life has changed in just a few generations with how much it stayed the same.

In the 1980s segments of the story, the older Sunja is portrayed by Academy Award-winning actress Youn Yuh-jung, who soulfully captures the character’s inner strength. It’s a subtle and moving performance. Kim delicately portrays the young Sunja with steely determination, while Lee plays a Hansu that is both tender and cynical, adding dimension to a character that in print seemed more villainous.

The series takes some liberties with the novel’s storyline, adding backstory for one character and leaving out important developments that would take—and perhaps will yet take—a subsequent season or two to resolve. However, it succeeds at what it does present viewers. As well as being a heartfelt immigrant saga, told in three languages, Pachinko features an international cast and crew, which in its collaboration presents an innovative new chapter in the globalization of entertainment.

The series premieres March 25 on Apple TV.