Pachinko

In 1932, Yangjin is 37 years old and is in charge of the small boardinghouse. She has six lodgers who take turns sleeping in the one guest room: “None of these men could afford a wife, so for them, this setup was not half bad” (11). It is in the middle of the Depression, and food is scarce, but Yangjin is able to plan meals carefully to keep her lodgers fed, and she hires two sisters to help with cleaning and maintenance. The lodgers talk politics; Yangjin does not get involved in such talk.

Baek Isak shows up at the boardinghouse, seeking accommodation. He has traveled from Pyongyang and is exhausted. He asks Yangjin if she remembers his brother, Yoseb, who had stayed there ten years ago, before moving to Japan. Yangjin remembers him and smiles when Baek recounts his brother’s compliment: “He wrote about your stewed codfish. ‘Better than home,’ he said” (15). Even though Yangjin has no room for Baek Isak, she allows him to sleep in the shared guest room, though she warns him about the crowded conditions and worries about how the other lodgers will react.

The next morning, Yangjin continues with her daily chores. When the coal man Jun arrives, she learns from him that her new lodger is a minister. When Jun met Baek the night before, helping him find his way to Yangjin’s house, he told Baek of his wife’s illness, and Baek “said he would pray for her right then and there. He just dropped his head and closed his eyes!” (19). Yangjin prepares him some food and drink when he makes reference to her famous cooking, and after he eats, he begins to talk politics, complaining about the fact that the talented young people are all going to Japan. He begins swearing, “It’s our own damn fault for losing the country. […] Those goddamn aristocrat sons of bitches sold us out,” which makes the sisters working at the lodging giggle (20).

After Jun leaves, the narration focuses on Sunja, Yangjin’s daughter: “In any setting, Sunja was noticed right away for her quick energy and bright manner. The lodgers never ceased trying to woo Sunja, but none had succeeded” (21). The reader quickly learns that potential suitors do not matter, since Sunja has recently told her mother she is pregnant and the father of the child cannot marry her.

One of the servant girls screams that the new lodger is bleeding. When Yangjin and Sunja see the blood on the pillow, they realize he has tuberculosis, the same disease that killed Hoonie. When Pastor Baek wakes up, Yangjin asks him if he has tuberculosis. He says that he had the disease but he had recently been well. But when he sees the blood, he is immediately remorseful that he has put them in danger. Yangjin tells him that he will stay in the house until he gets better, but that he must stay in the storage room, the same place Hoonie stayed when he was sick. Yangjin and Sunja did not get sick as they cared for Hoonie, but others need to be protected.

Chapters 4-6 explain the circumstances of Sunja’s pregnancy. Chapter 4 begins six months earlier, in June 1932, when Sunja meets the new fish broker, Koh Hansu. After her father’s death, Sunja was put in charge of shopping at the market. When she goes to the market, she becomes aware of the way Koh Hansu is always staring at her. He tries talking to her, but she walks away from him, not answering his questions.

One day, after finishing her shopping, Sunja is stopped by three Japanese high school boys. They take some of her food and mock her. They then grab at her breasts and threaten to rape her until Hansu intervenes, grabbing one of the boys and threatening to kill them, their parents, and their entire families. The boys are terrified and quickly apologize to Sunja. Sunja is stunned that he, a Korean, would talk to Japanese boys this way. He warns her not to walk alone and says that the colonial government is “looking for girls now […] to take to China for soldiers” (32). He then walks her to the ferry so that she can go home.

The following day, Sunja acknowledges Hansu in the marketplace, bowing to him and then thanking him for helping her. He asks to talk to her at the beach by her house, where she does her laundry. When they meet, Hansu tells her a little bit about himself. His mother died when he was very young. He used to do laundry like her and hated it: “One of the great things about being rich is having someone else wash your clothes and cook your meals” (36). He asks her what she thinks about when she does laundry; Sunja doesn’t know how to respond and finally says, “When I wash clothes, I think about doing it well. It’s one of the chores I like because I can make something better than it was. It isn’t like a broken pot that you have to throw away” (37).

Hansu says that Sunja should call him “Oppa” because he wants her to think of him as an older brother and as a friend. Sunja is both surprised and excited by this opportunity. They agree to meet when she does the wash every few days. When they meet again, she feels guilty for lying to her mother and to the sisters. But Sunja continues to talk to Hansu: “The more she saw him, the more vivid he grew in her mind. His stories filled her head with people and places she had never imagined before” (39).

Three months later, Sunja tells Hansu she is going mushroom picking, and that he is an expert at finding mushrooms. They agree to meet the next day and they are able to pick a great quantity of mushrooms. When they are done, Hansu and Sunja have sex.

Hansu has to return to Japan for business. Sunja expects that he will want to marry her when he returns, and she is excited at the idea of becoming his wife. She is ready to move to Osaka to be with him, although she would be sad to leave her mother. When she discovers she has skipped a period, she is excited by the idea that she’s pregnant.

When Hansu returns from Japan, they meet again at the beach. They have sex; afterwards, Sunja tells Hansu that she is pregnant. He is happy, and then tells Sunja that he has a wife and three daughters in Osaka. She is shocked. He assures her that he will take care of her, even though he can’t marry her, by buying her a large house for her to live in with their child. He hopes that they can have more children together. Sunja tells him she will never see him again, and tells him to stay away or she will kill herself. She thinks of her poor father:

It was better he was dead so he would not see what a filthy creature she had become. He had taught her to respect herself, and she had not. She had betrayed her mother and father, who had done nothing but work hard and take care of her like a jewel (50).