Apple TV: “Pachinko” season 1

In 1910, Japan annexed Korea.  This turned into a 35-year occupation, marked by the diminution of Korean culture, sexual slavery of Korean women (they were known as “comfort women”) and the forced relocation of millions of Korean citizens all over Japan.

“Pachinko” (Apple TV) may be the first series ever to explain the torturous relationship between the two countries. It is sensitive, easy to grasp, and not one bit boring.

Based on Min Jin Lee’s NYT best-seller “Pachinko,” the story is mostly told from the POV of Sunja, a fisherman’s daughter living in a Korean coastal village during the early 1910s. She lives a fairly uneventful life until Hanso (Lee Min-ho), a slick Korean who has grown up in Japan, comes to town, representing Japanese business interests. He espies Sunja from afar and taken by her beauty, introduces himself. One thing leads to another, and Sunja becomes pregnant.

Facing a life of shame, Sunja has the good fortune to meet Isak, a Korean Christian preacher (Steve Sang-Hyun Noh) who stumbles into the village on the way to Japan, ill with tuberculosis. Sunja and her mother nurse him back to health. Overhearing their conversation one day, Isak discovers her secret and offers to marry her. However, this means she must move to Osaka with him, where she is soon appalled by the squalid living conditions in the city’s Korean neighborhood.

Fast forward to 1989, when Solomon (Jin Ha), a young American banker who is of Korean origin but who grew up in Japan, is sent by his firm to Tokyo to convince an elderly Korean woman (Park Hye-Jin) to sell her prime piece of real estate to developers, which she refuses to do. Solomon, as we soon learn, is the grandson of Sunja, now elderly and played by Youn Yuh-jung, who received an Oscar for her performance in the film “Minari” (2021).

Quite simply, “Pachinko” is epic, a multigenerational family drama on the order of “The Forsyth Saga” or “Roots.” The cast of both Korean and Japanese actors elevates it above soap opera. Sunja is actually played by three different actresses: Yuna as a child, Minha Kim as a young woman, as well as Youn as the grandmother. Minha Kim is a standout: her portrayal of a young woman being forever separated from her mother in Korea and living a hard life in a foreign country may be a picture-perfect reenactment of what our own ancestors faced when they emigrated to America.

Through the eyes of Sunja and her family, we see the disparaging way Koreans were treated by their Japanese occupiers, continually scapegoated as dirty and crude. This becomes especially apparent in Episode 7, set in 1923 Yokohama during a devastating earthquake. Not only did thousands lose their lives, but Japanese vigilantes used it as an excuse to hunt down and kill Koreans in the false belief the latter were looting after the quake.

“Pachinko,” filmed in two languages, has subtitles in three: Japanese (blue), Korean (yellow) and English (white). Wildly popular when it premiered back in 2022 (we were late to the party), Season 2 of “Pachinko” rolls out in late August. Send out for some K-BBQ, and enjoy .