![]() Stunned, Sunja refuses and instead marries a minister, Isak Baek, who is sympathetic to her plight. When Sunja informs her lover of her condition, he reveals that he is already married to a woman in Japan but would like to keep Sunja as his mistress. However, Sunja’s simple life becomes tumultuous after she is pursued by a wealthy stranger and becomes pregnant. It is in this environment that Sunja grows up, and despite the hardships, Sunja is raised by her doting parents to become a hardworking and compassionate young woman. However, Sunja’s parents choose to remain apolitical and instead approach rising taxes and dwindling resources by turning their home into a boarding house. Only a few years before her birth, Japan annexed Korea, which has led to political unrest and growing resentment within the country. The novel’s main protagonist is Sunja, whose story first begins in the late 1910s when she is born to peasants living in the seaside village of Yeongdo, Korea. The novel focuses on the often overlooked and rarely discussed history of Korean immigrants in Japan and, through Lee’s frank prose, portrays the resilience of the story’s characters as they endure and thrive while living in a country hostile to their presence. ![]() “History has failed us, but no matter.” With this haunting opening line, author Min Jin Lee sets the tone for Pachinko -her sweeping, four-generational epic that closely follows a Korean family as they make a life for themselves in 20 th century Japan. ![]()
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