The stunning adaptation of Min Jin Lee’s best-selling novel returns, weaving through the complicated web of one family in different decades At the end of Pachinko ’s brilliant first season, the family at its heart and across its timespans were in moments of change. In the late 1930s, Kim Sun-ja (played by Kim Min-ha) and her two young sons were dealing with their father and her partner Isak (Steve Sang-hyun Noh) being arrested by Japanese police, throwing the safety and survival of their family into question. In 1989, Sun-ja’s grandson Solomon (Jin Ha) is facing his own battle after being fired from his job for standing up for what he thought was right.
The second season of Min Jin Lee’s best-selling novel doesn’t pick up on this precipice, but some years later, in a phase of rebuilding. The younger Sun-ja is now in 1945 and still in Japan, the destruction of World War II no longer a threat but a reality. Air raid sirens and blackouts are the norm and, as Koh Han-su (Lee Min-ho) – the secret biological father of her eldest son Noa – repeatedly tells her, those in the cities are desperately trying to seek refuge in the countryside.
Sun-ja, though, refuses to leave, steadfastly committed to waiting out the war in case Isak returns. We catch up with Solomon still in 1989 Tokyo, attempting to start his own investment fund in place of his old job. Calls to old college friends in the US and meetings with financial players in his city aren’t going as well as he’d h.