Pachinko

Sunja, a poor Korean teenager falls in love with a rich stranger near the fishing piers of her hometown in Korea in the early 1900's. When she becomes pregnant, Hansu tells her that he is already a married man in Japan with 3 daughters but he will take care of her and their baby. Sunja refuses to be bought. Instead she accepts an offer of marraige from a sickly minister that is staying at her mother's boarding house on his way to Japan. She moves to japan with him and raises the baby Noa with him and they have another baby Mozasu together. But Hansu remains in both Sunja's and Noa's lives even after Sunja's husband dies. He is determined to be a part of his son's life, despite Sunja's strong feelings to the contrary. Sunja's life is heartbreaking as is most of the other Korean peoples. The suffering and the dissolution of their homeland, the slurs and the hatred spewed at them, the lack of food, decent living conditions throughout the 1900's during the war, all were utterly heartbreaking. But all these horrors contributed to the depth of the story and to the genuine feel of the suffering and day to day life that the Korean people felt. Sunja needed help for her sons and her family but she did not want to be tied to her son Noa's powerful father Hansu. This decision as well as her decision to leave her homeland and move to Japan when she got pregnant, catapult down the line and have everlasting consequences.

This was an eye opening read into Asian culture and the war that occurred during that time over in that area. I never really understood the affect of the war on the asian culture as I do now. I also did not understand the conflict between the Koreans and Japanese as I see it now. It was interesting and sad but I'm glad to have read it and learned something of it. I have a new appreciation now. What a fabulous book!