It’s the story of a long misunderstood and marginalized population that finally comes into the limelight.
Series Pachinko, broadcast on the Apple TV+ streaming platform since March 25, retraces the saga of a Korean family throughout the XXe century, constantly tossed between Japanese colonization, the war in the Pacific and waves of migration from Korea to the Japanese archipelago. It is adapted from the eponymous and best-selling novel by the American-Korean writer Min Jin Lee (translated into French by Charleston editions).
Between family history and fiction
On the occasion of the launch of the series, the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun published an interview with actor Sohee Park. He plays Baek Mozasu on screen, the second son of Sunja, the heroine of the series, who we see at different ages in her life, played mainly by Youn Yuh-jung (seen in the film Threaten). Like her character, Sohee Park is a zainichia descendant of Korean immigrants to Japan – third generation, in his case.
For Park, it was truly a dream role, especially since his maternal grandmother immigrated to Japan from Korea in the first half of the 1930s, just like Sunja. “Every time I saw Youn Yuh-jung speak in Japanese with a Korean accent, I cried, it reminded me too much of my grandmother,” he remembers, moved.
He reveals in passing that he contributed to the creation of Min Jin Lee’s novel: “When she lived in Tokyo in 2007, she interviewed dozens of zainichi. Of which me.”
Kept on the margins of Japanese society
Ins