The 20 Most Touching Moments In "Pachinko" (So Far)
Apple TV's Pachinko is a gorgeously shot take on the spectacular novel by Min Jin Lee, weaving dream-like scenery and ethereal music with the harsh realities of wartime, generational trauma, and greed. The show follows a Korean family starting during the second world war through 80 years of immigration, births, deaths, and dreams for the next generation.
Poor but proud innkeepers have a daughter named Sunja who they treasure, and when Sunja falls pregnant with a powerful Korean gangster's child, she refuses his offer of being a well-maintained mistress. Her choice leads to marriage with a Jesus-like, physically frail pastor Isak, and they move to Japan, where Koreans are treated as dirty outsiders. The show flashes back and forth between Sunja and her grandchildren's lives in a line of Biblical patterns between parent and child, blood siblings and adopted ones as they navigate displacement, race, and why any of it even matters in a rapidly changing world.
Here are some of the most touching moments I loved from the first season.
Warning: Spoilers ahead!
1.Sunja's dad Hoonie watching her dive
Trusting your child to strike out on her own, while the impossibly vast ocean is out there to swallow her up at every second, is a beautiful and terrifying thing. When Sunja's dad Hoonie is watching his precious daughter dive for oysters and is holding his breath to test how long she can hold her breath before being in danger, the audience is holding their breath with him.
2.When Koh Hansu turns on her out of anger and hurt
As we later find out, Hansu has mad trust issues with women due to his father, and he takes those issues (along with his long-simmering anger at the world) out on Sunja. He cares for her in his own way, and despite his resentful words, ends up being a dark guardian angel for her and her family later on, but when he is denied what he wants — a chance to have a son — his powerful anger lashes out and makes Sunja even more steadfast in her decision.
3.Sunja's mom Yangjin buying rice for her daughter's wedding
It's difficult for many Westerners, particularly those who didn't grow up in wartime or extreme poverty, to understand the symbolism of food and scarcity. My grandparents and parents grew up during and post-cultural revolution where even if you had money, you couldn't always eat white rice or white flour. Brown rice and millet in many regions of Asia were traditionally for animals and the poor, and consumed out of necessity. Yangjin spent all her savings and risked government prosecution because white rice was a symbol of dignity — rice grown in Korea is commandeered by the Japanese — and a taste of the homeland for colonized Koreans.
4.Sunja's mother giving her advice before Sunja and Isak leave for Japan
Listen to your brother and sister in law even if they're mean because it's difficult to feed another mouth. Please your husband because he is your safety and duty. Generations of women, my own family included, grew up with this advice, and for many, the helpless, eternally enduring role her mother tells her to accept so she will survive hit painfully home.
5.Solomon and Sunja visting Korean lady to convince her to sell
Solomon's goal in Japan is to convince a Korean homeowner to sell her home (for an exorbitant sum) to a firm who has a lot riding on being able to turn the area into profitable hotels. When he is rebuffed the first time, he comes back a second time with his grandmother, and they eat together, and the older women commiserate about their shared experiences as Korean immigrants in Japan.
6.Korean singer who commits suicide on the ship
In one of the most artistic and moving episodes of the season, scenes of a beautiful and glamorous Korean singer performing aboard Sunja and Isak's ship to Japan is juxtaposed with Solomon persuading an elder Korean lady to sign over her home in front of a roomful of Japanese businessmen. The Korean singer is traveling first-class, dressed in the finest furs, and performing for the rich and powerful, but a Japanese man threateningly touches her, implying some type of ownership. She switches from Italian opera to heartrending traditional Korean singing and kills herself at the climax, as tensions build during the business deal and Solomon ultimately kills his own future at the firm by telling the homeowner not to sign.
7.Solomon blowing his deal/career up and dancing in the rain
After Solomon self-immolates, he runs outside in the rain. A band is playing, and he strips his monkey suit off and dances wildly, feeling some kind of victory in making his Freudian death-wish (for both corporate greed and Japanese assimilation) come true. Even hardcore corporate lackey Naomi smiles, for a moment.
8.Dokhee and Bokhee's come-to-reality talk about their prospects
The pragmatic Bokhee dashes Dokhee's hopes of a happy ending with a harsh reality check; they're orphans without money or beauty, and the best match either of them could hope for is to work their fingers to the bone for somebody equally poor. Better they stay together.
9.Sunja and Bokhee reuniting
Bokhee survives being sold as a comfort girl to Japanese soldiers, but Dokhee died from a broken spirit. Sunja reunites with Bokhee when she returns — finally — to Korea, and they have a tearful reunion.
10.Kyunghee's kindness to Sunja and recognition she is the strongest one
Sunja's quiet strength holds the family together through the war, and sweet, gentle, high-born lady Kyunghee first sees it when Sunja pays Yoseb's debt. Innkeeper's daughter Sunja has an innate business sense and quickly recognizes the doom of owing money to the Yakuza, which is why she ventures bravely into men's territory, sells her watch, and pays the debt off, while Kyunghee is too intimidated by her husband's displeasure and unused to dealing with people outside the home. Kyunghee's continual defense of Sunja and the sisterhood this first act sparks is a touching example of women supporting each other.
11.Koh Hansu and his father's relationship
Episode 7 is entirely devoted to Koh Hansu's backstory growing up in Japan with his father, and watching how devoted he is to his father and how his father cares so much about his son's future that he pushes him away so that Hansu isn't stuck with his debt is heartbreaking.
12.Koh Hansu seeing his father losing it all to a prostitute
Koh Hansu's father foolishly borrows money from the Yakuza and loans money to a prostitute he fell in love with. Unfortunately, that woman did not intend on paying him back, and it costs him everything. Is that why Hansu resents women? Deep trauma about how loving a woman can bring men low? "Bitches ain't shit but hos and tricks" just because Brenda doesn't want your baby? Tupac songs are not great relationship guidelines.
13.Koreans being aimlessly murdered and blamed as outsiders after the earthquake
When things get really rough, people need a scapegoat. After the Kanto earthquake leveled Tokyo-Yokohama, enraged Japanese hunted down and massacred Korean migrant workers by the hundreds. Hansu had to stay hidden in a cart as the mob passed, which is why he ends up owing a life debt along with his father's financial debt to the Yakuza member who saved him.
14.Sunja and Isak's first night together as a couple
We get to see the tenderness between them grow, and Isak express his respect for her strength as they overhear Yoseb berating Sunja through the thin walls.
15.Hana and Etsuko's hospital reunion
The darkness caught up with Hana — what exactly that darkness is, we're not sure, except that she blamed her mother. She also is in the end stages of AIDS. But at the end, no matter how much Hana hurt and ran away from her, Etsuko is there to show her love as a mother.
16.Solomon and Mozasu's fight over whether Pachinko is good enough for Solomon
In a classic father-child misunderstanding, Solomon's father Mozasu (Moses) wants what he sees is best for his son through his years of experience dealing with a harsh world, and young Solomon thinks Mozasu is wrong. The father is frustrated and hurt that he worked so hard doing things the son never had to do so that the son would never have to do those things, but the son is hurt that his father doesn't see him as a man who can handle the world. Their interaction is paralleled by Hansu and his father and Hansu and Noa: "You can't fight blood."
17.Hana's "It's time to stop feeling sorry for yourself" speech
Hana gives Solomon some potent advice that could be taken in two ways on her death bed: "Fuck them. Show no mercy." Solomon bottomed out on his classic hero's journey with his corporate career, his relationship with his father, losing the love of his life (Hana), and losing his visa (so he can't leave Tokyo for a while). He could either say "fuck you" to Japanese society by joining with his half-cousin in his potentially illegal ventures or take Shiffley's down — and from what he discloses to his cousin in a teasing snippet, it seems to be the latter.
18.When Yoseb is fired because of Isak's arrest
Yoseb believes in following the rules and doing the right thing. He thought his faithful service would be rewarded when he asks his boss for help getting Isak out of prison, but his boss fires him instead for being the brother of a political prisoner (and a Korean upstart). Playing by the rules only works if everybody is playing the same game. "You can't fight blood."
19.Solomon's run with Hana to "Hawaii" as she dies
When Solomon rushes Hana's bed outside and puts a lei on her in her dying moments, I cried. Jin Ha is such a great actor; his ability to portray a constantly, barely-restrained anger makes it so much more touching when you see him break the cool exterior.
20.The zainichi interviewed at the end of the last episode
Go back a generation or two in any Asian immigrant family and you'll find many similar traumas; East Asia was rocked by war and extremely violent political upheaval for a better part of the last century. Many of our parents and grandparents didn't have enough to eat growing up. But well-told stories are specific, and the real-life zainichi (Koreans and their descendants who immigrated to Japan while Korea was under Japanese colonization) elders who are interviewed at the end of the season's last episode speak to us of a past some of them deem too painful to share. They endured.
What was your favorite moment from Pachinko's first season?
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