In Korea, the entire meal centers around rice. We call the dinner table a “bapsang,” literally “rice table,” because all the banchan—and the soups or stews, or even the meat or fish—serve to accompany the bowl of rice. While a meal can just be a bowl of rice, it’s not a meal without rice. Apple TV+’s Pachinko, an adaptation of Min Jin Lee’s award-winning novel, tracks a multi-generational family across a century, transposing the life of Sunja, born and raised in Japanese-occupied Korea at the beginning of the 20th century, with that of her grandson Solomon, who’s navigating life on the corporate ladder in 1980s Japan. Sunja is an enigma Solomon doesn’t really care to crack, but as we walk in Sunja’s straw jipsin, we relive the struggles that she, and many Koreans, endured during the Japanese occupation. Their dichotomy, and this history, is unveiled over a simple bowl of rice.An elderly Sunja (played by Minari’s Youn Yuh-Jung) has lived most of her life in Japan, following her departure from her home country of Korea as a young woman. In Episode Three, shortly after burying Kyunghee, the sister-in-law she’d been caring for, she’s dragged to the doorstep of a fellow Korean expat (Park Hye-Jin) by Solomon (Jin Ha), who hopes to convince this homeowner to sell her land to a large Japanese corporation. Sitting at the table of an unfamiliar compatriot, Sunja takes one spoonful of rice and her eyes widen, overcome with surprise. The homeowner understands immediately: “You taste… Click below to read the full story from Esquire
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