Pachinko

The season 1 finale of Pachinko concludes at a port in Osaka in 1938. A young Sunja (Minha Kim) wheels two large barrels of kimchi through a bustling open air market. In contrast, at a hospital in 1989, her future grandson Solomon (Jin Ha) storms into the room of his ailing childhood friend, Hana (Mari Yamamoto), and in an anguished but gleeful haze, hastily wheels her gurney through the sterile halls to get her to the roof. She contently gazes at the sky one last time before she succumbs to AIDS. The scenes, it seems, speak to the contrasting nature of life and death.Pachinko Season 1 Download.

At the port, young Sunja takes her future into her own hands. She’s selling homemade kimchi to support her two young sons following the incarceration of her husband Isak, played by Steve Sanghyun Noh. The mild-mannered pastor has been arrested for his involvement with a left-leaning movement that advocates for peace and fair wages in a militant Japan. The moment feels very much like a rebirth for Sunja, or, as series creator and showrunner Soo Hugh puts it, “A true end of something, but also a beginning.

The series, based on Min Jin Lee’s bestselling novel of the same name, follows four generations of a Korean immigrant family led by the indomitable Sunja (played masterfully by Minha in one stage of her life and Oscar winner Yuh-Jung Youn in another). Set mostly against the backdrop of Japan’s annexation of Korea, the series is rooted in survival, so it was a “no-brainer,” Hugh says, to conclude in such a simple, yet hopeful, way. Below, Hugh discusses the finale, her mother’s unexpected reaction to the show, hopes for season 2 — which was officially greenlit Friday, after EW spoke with Hugh — and