115 pages • 3 hours read
Min Jin LeePachinko
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2017A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Book 1, Chapters 12-17Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Book 1: “Gohyang/Hometown 1910-1933”
Book 1, Chapter 12 Summary: “Osaka, April 1933”
Yoseb Baek, Isak’s brother, eagerly waits for his brother and his brother’s new wife to arrive at the Osaka train station, while his own wife, Kyunghee, is back at home preparing a feast for them all. When they arrive, Yoseb embraces his brother, surprised at how he has grown into a gentleman. He welcomes Sunja, who is happy to see the warm embrace between the brothers. Yoseb tells her how he remembers staying at her family’s boarding house, enjoying talks with her father and eating her mother’s “most outstanding meals” (98). They take the trolley to Yoseb’s home; Sunja is impressed by the well-dressed people and the various buildings and shops of Osaka.
When they arrive at “Ikaino, the ghetto where the Koreans lived […] it looked vastly different from the nice houses [Sunja had] passed by on the trolley ride from the station” (100). The shacks are poorly-made, and “matted newspapers and tar paper covered the window from inside” (100). Children dressed in rags played next to a drunken man and animal smells are strong throughout the neighborhood. Yoseb tells them about the high cost of rent and food to explain the living conditions.
