Being a kdrama afficiando, I heard that Lee Min Ho was going to act in Pachinko. I am not a big fan of Lee Min Ho but I was interested in the topic as it dealt with the Japan-Korea relationship. Japan had colonized Korea in 1911 and liberation happened only after the end of the World War. As a colonizer, Japan committed many atrocities including forcing women into what was euphemistically called as "comfort women" but in reality was prostitution. The drama was aired in Apple TV which I did not see as I do not have a subscription. However, I was able to buy the book in the book fair.
The author is a Korean-American and first got the idea for the book in 1989. Pachinko is a pin ball game- sort of illegal gambling that flies under the radar and is majorly operated by Koreans living in Japan. As a colonized country, most Koreans were desperately poor and migrated to Japan, where they endured poverty and racist slurs and indignities. They were not given citizenship and those Koreans who returned back to Korea from Japan, were shunned by their countrymen. So the Korean-Japanese are kind of neither here nor there people.
The book spans an ambitious time span from 1910 to 1989. Divided into three parts, the book tells the story of Sunja, the only daughter of Hoonie, a club-footed and cleft-lipped man, and Yangjin, his wife. The first part is compelling as it is set in Korea and deals with the effect of colonization. Sunja meets a married yakuza (basically a gangster in Japan) and gets pregnant. An unmarried pregnant woman in those days, in any Asian society, was doomed. She is rescued from her fate by a Christian Pastor, Baek Isek, who offers to marry her and give her child his name. They move to Osaka where Baek Isek becomes a pastor in a Korean Church. Living with Isek's brother, Yoseb, they slowly build their life only for it to be shattered.
And from here the book kind of loses its focus. People come and go, time jumps happen and important events get short shrift, and Sunja never gets a moment of happiness.
As I read through the second and third part, I was reminded of the book "A Fine Balance" by Rohinton Mistry. I gave up reading that book towards the end because I just could not take the sort of unhappy events that kept happening in the protagonist's life. I was like "Just give that poor woman a break!"
The only difference is that I completed Pachinko. At least in then end Sunja had money and was living a comfortable life.
It is the bigger message that made me little uncomfortable. As Sunja's grandson joins his father's Pachinko business, it appeared as though the author was saying whatever happens a Korean-Japanese can never be anything else. That is a very harsh indictment of a society/country.
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