Pachinko starts with the birth of Sunja’s father – Hoonie – in Yeongdo, Korea. Hoonie is born with a cleft lip and a club foot. Hoonie is a lovely guy but not considered eligable for marriage until the Japanese invasion. He is matched with Yangjin by a matchmaker. Yangjin’s father is a farmer who has lost everything in the colonial conquest. Hoonie & Yangjin take over the guest house that his parents ran.
Sunja is raised by her mother Yangjin, after her father dies of tuberculosis. Sunja helps out at the guest house, and she does the shopping for them – and at the market she meets Koh Hansu. Though she’s not interested in him at first, she falls pregnant and learns that he is married. One of her mother’s lodgers, Baek Isak, offers to marry her and take her to Japan with him where he is going to live with his brother Yoseb and his wife Kyunghee. Sunja agrees and she and Isak move to Osaka in Japan.
In Japan, Sunja and Koh Hansu’s son Noa is born. Sunja and Kyunghee discover that Yoseb has debts and Sunja sells the watch Koh Hansu gave her to pay off the debt. Yoseb is furious that she has done this behind his back. After a few years, Isak and Sunja have another son: Mozasu. Shortly after Mozasu’s birth Isak is arrested because he is a Christian and he should be worshipping the Japanese emperor Hirohito. Sunja starts selling kimchi on the market in Osaka, and quite soon her little business becomes rather profitable. She is eventually approached by a restaurant to make and sell the kimchi there. When Izak is dying (of tuberculosis) he is released from prison.
The book follows Noa and Mozasu’s lives…
This book is so good – I’ve read it twice now and it was even better the second time around. I love Japan – but I hate the systemic racism against the Koreans in this book.
Read for the ShelfReflection Reading Challenge 2025
Prompt 42: A book from New York Times list of top 25 books from the last 25 years
Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
