Min Jin Lee’s bestselling novel gets a tantalising adaptation that sweeps back and forth from Korea in 1915 to Japan’s Wall Street era. It’s a rollercoaster ride through time and space.
Just like in the novel, the drama's multi-generational narrative allows this rich history to unfold at a pace that is beguilingly peaceful, opening in a deceptively idyllic coastline setting in Korea, shortly after the Japanese annexing of Korea.
Spanning nearly 100 years and moving from Korea at the start of the 20th century to pre- and postwar Osaka and, finally, Tokyo and Yokohama, the novel reads like a long, intimate hymn to the struggles of people in a foreign land.
It is breathtaking in almost every department. Pachinko the show is just as beautiful as the book on which it's based.
Sunja, the family matriarch, is the only surviving child of Hoonie and Yangjin. She is born in Yeongdo, Korea, around 1916.
The drama genuinely focused on the entire Japanese annexing of Korea along with the other characters.
It showed so many personalities in this drama and so many emotional scenes were shown in the drama.
Sunja became one of my favorite strong female characters that deserve more recognition just like other iconic characters from different dramas.
The drama isn't for everyone and there is a thin border between people liking it and not liking it.
Dive in if you feel like it, you're going to be in for a ride.
'There is nothing fu***** worse than knowing that you are just like everybody else. What a messed up lousy existence." -a quote from the novel.