Pachinko Boss Talks Sunja’s Reunion With Hansu in Season 2 Premiere — and ‘The Stand She Had to Take’
The following contains spoilers from Episode 1 of Pachinko Season 2, now streaming on Apple TV+.
Sunja (played by Minha Kim) found herself on the wrong side of the law — and then face to face with a blast from her romantic past — as Pachinko‘s Season 2 premiere drew to a close.
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Young Sunja’s Season 2 story picked up seven years later, in 1945, with her striving to make ends meet in Osaka, selling kimchee on the street while sons Noa and Mozasu attend school. Husband Isak, Mozasu’s father, is still in jail, the outlook for his return very unknown.
With cabbage (or anything else) to pickle in rapidly dwindling supply, Sunja runs out of kimchee and is coaxed by a neighbor to sell rice wine at the black market. The difficult choice presented here marks a deviation from author Min Jin Lee’s 2017 novel, in which Sunja went to work at a restaurant after exhausting her kimchee supply.
The change-up “came from talking to historians and other Zainichi women (Koreans residing in Japan) from that time,” Soo Hugh, who created the Pachinko TV series, tells TVLine. “One of our historians, Jackie Kim, who works extensively with Zainichi storytelling and narratives, talks a lot about how women had to make saki wine, rice wine, to make a living during this time period, and I was like, ‘Oh!’ When she told us that, it really broke open that story. I thought that was such an incredible historical detail [that] we really wanted to bring into the show.”
Plus, Sunja agreeing to peddle rice wine — and quickly getting arrested as part of a raid, upon making her first delivery — set the stage for her to not go to trial nor face any punishment, but suddenly be set free as soon as the processing officer heard her name. Outside the jail, a confused Sunja was ushered into a waiting car by Mr. Kim, a friendly local whom Mozasu had earlier suspected was “a spy.” Sunja was then driven to a large, beautiful home. Who should await an audience with her there but Hansu (Lee Minho), her onetime lover (and Noa’s father).
Hansu explained that Mr. Kim was hired to keep an eye on Sunja. He then put forth a bold, generous offer. Noting that World War II is about to drop some bombs on their doorstep, he invited/urged Sunja to take sister-in-law Kyunghee and their collective children to a house he has set up in the countryside.
But Sunja — for multiple reasons — turned down Hansu’s proposal/escape plan.
“By that point, people were so sick of the war,” showrunner Hugh explains. “It was 1945, they’d been living through the war for a few years and there’d been warning after warning that bombs were coming. I think she just didn’t believe it. Because if she really believed the city was going to be bombed the next day, she would have taken her kids out.”
There’s also the fact that Sunja is holding out hope that husband Isak will one day be freed, and return home.
“It also speaks to her incredible loyalty to Isak and this love for him, that she wouldn’t leave [Osaka] without her husband,” Hugh notes. “I think it was a stand that she had to take against Hansu.”
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