Korean Game Arcades Prosper as War Ends

"As he walked away, he wiped his hand on his trousers."

I used to date a man from Sierra Leone, he came to the UK as a child. He was a model citizen, and worked as a network engineer for a British company. One day, he told me about something that happened at work. He had a conversation with a white manager, in the middle of an open-plan office. At the end of the conversation, the manager shook his hand. Then he departed. My partner remained where he was and watched the manager walk away between the desks. As he walked, he wiped his hand on his trousers, because he had shaken hands with a Black man. A great deal of emotional complexity, the contagion of shame, the cruelty of being treated as a lesser human, wounded pride, and much more was encased in the moment of observing a single, silent gesture from across a room. There are a million ways to express and experience prejudice, but that specific gesture was the one that marked that particular day. A small gesture, but all the more significant because of that. Powerful because subtle, even banal. Loaded with meaning.

I was reminded of that moment, in which I was offered a sudden and intimate glimpse of being detested because of one’s race or ethnicity, when reading a book for the latest edition of “cure your brain rot”, our semiotic reading club. The book is “Pachinko” by Min Jin Lee, an historical novel. Published in 2017, it was a finalist for that year’s National Book Award for Fiction (USA). It was also adapted for television by Apple TV+ in 2022 and as a second season in 2024. I’ve avoided watching it because I wanted to read the book and write this review first.

“Pachinko” describes four generations of a Korean family that emigrates to Japan. Saying that makes it sound voluntary but there is so much going on around this family, in Korea and Japan, all of which is outside of their control. It would be more accurate to say that they end up in Japan, where their descendants are born, while never quite escaping being treated as foreigners. No matter how long they live there, they remain outsiders. No matter how magnanimous and sympathetic they are to the predicament of Japan and its people and the ways that the Japanese themselves were treated unfairly at various times during the long years of the 20th century.

“Pachinko” takes place over decades, from 1910 to 1989. A lot happens in East Asia during these fateful decades. The story begins in the 1910s because that’s when Japan annexed Korea. You see, Japan had had military victories against China and Russia and had big ambitions. If you look at the map, you’ll see that Korea would have been very important to Japan, offering a point of access to China as well as Russia, right next door. This is when the upheaval of this Korean family begins. There is a poor couple and their only child, a daughter. When the husband dies, mother Yangjin turns their home into a tiny boarding house. They scrape a living but money is tight and Japanese occupation is making life difficult. Taxes soar, Koreans have to sell their land and property. There seems to be no future. To make things even worse, Yangjin’s teenage daughter, Sunja, is impregnated by a smooth-talking Korean yakuza who is in no position to marry her. If you didn’t know that yakuza could be Korean, now you know. According to Wikipedia, even though ethnic Koreans amount to only 0.5% of the Japanese population, “they are a prominent part of yakuza because they suffer discrimination in Japanese society”. Already, at the very outset of the story, discrimination against Koreans influences Sunja’s fate by throwing her in the path of a Korean member of a Japanese crime gang in occupied Busan. If you’re wondering what he’s doing there, he’s at the market, controlling the price of fish.

“It’s only a matter of grace that I was born a male who could enter my descendants in a family registry.”

You might guess that being an unmarried mother carries stigma in a traditional society but it’s not just that teenage Sunja will be shamed. She can’t even register her child’s birth and give the baby a last name. Only men can do that. So her child will be nameless – literally a nobody. A tiny bit of good luck arrives in Yangjin’s boarding house in the form of a new guest, a Christian minister from Pyongyang. He’s an honourable man, though frail and sickly. He’s travelling to Osaka to live with his brother and sister-in-law, because nothing in Korea is going well. He generously offers to marry Sunja, give her baby a name and take her to his new home. That is how Sunja and her descendants wind up in Japan. Even Yangjin eventually comes to join them.

The next part of the book concerns the period 1939-1962. If you are British like me, you will recognise this period as dominated by World War II, which you might think of as “Allies versus Germany” because that’s how it’s presented in our media. But it really was a World War. With the help of strategically-located Korean land, Japan persistently invaded China, especially and notably in 1937, which led to the Second Sino-Japanese War of 1937-1945. If your school was like mine, this was a war they didn’t teach you about and that you only discovered in adulthood, with all its many horrors such as the unprintable-word of Nanking. If you went to an American school, you might have learned about Pearl Harbor in 1941, which ultimately led to the American bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, followed by Japan’s surrender, and Korea’s division into territories which were supported by Russia and the United States, henceforth known as North and South Korea.

This period immediately following WWII, bringing the end of Japanese occupation of Korea, was unfortunately not a time of peace. It was not time for the Korean community in Japan to leave and go “home” to Korea, even if they still regarded it as home. For reasons to do with the Cold War, characterised by Soviet expansionism and American bluster, North Korea attacked South Korea in 1950, beginning the Korean War which lasted until 1953. Essentially an ideological conflict between the US and Russia, it took place on Korean ground and up to 4 million people died, 70% of them being civilians according to history.com. So that’s why it was a time for Koreans in Japan to stay where they were and try to make the best of it.

“One day, he would serve his community and make Koreans good children of the benevolent Emperor.”

Back to Sunja and her little family. They are living in a poor Korean ghetto in Osaka. Her frail husband has died. Her son, Noa, has grown into a fine boy. He tries his best to be well-behaved and diligent, meeting everyone’s expectations. He takes from his adoptive, Christian father an attitude of compassion and forgiveness. He takes from his school teacher a sense of duty to other Koreans and to Japan. It is his responsibility to be a good Korean and a loyal and virtuous member of his host nation – for Japan sees him always as a guest, even though he was born in Osaka and it is his home country. This huge effort to be a ‘good’ Japanese man is a burden that Noa carries throughout his life. Eventually he tries so hard to be good that the Korean part of him is renounced or obliterated, and if you read the book, you will see where that gets him. He is caught in a trap of identity. No matter how hard he tries, he cannot become a “perfect” Korean, because in the Japanese society where he resides, Korean and perfection are mutually exclusive. It’s a game he cannot win. Eventually he realises this and tries to become perfectly Japanese but this, too, is an unwinnable game because a person’s past is not so easy to hide. It has a way of following you, ever on the brink of detection, like a crime. Speaking of which, his late father was his father in name only. His real father, living in rude health into his old age, is a Korean yakuza. The cards are stacked against Noa no matter which way he turns.

“Mozasu knew he was becoming one of the bad Koreans.”

By this time, Noa has a brother, Sunja’s second child. Mozasu (named after Moses) is the biological child of Sunja’s husband, conceived just before he dies of causes which I will leave you to read about. Mozasu is not quite as eager to please as Noa. Like Noa, he correctly perceives the exact way in which the cards are stacked against him as a person of Korean heritage born in Japan. But he is not the type to spend his life bending over backwards trying to please people who don’t necessarily like him or want him in “their” country. When Noa was bullied at school, he responded by working harder. When Mozasu is bullied at school and the Japanese boys tell him “Go back to Korea, you smelly b**tard”, he hits them until he draws blood.

Mozasu’s pride, his intact self-esteem, and his instinct for self-defence, all drive him in the direction of fulfilling a Japanese stereotype – the “bad Korean”. Becoming a bad Korean is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Bad Koreans fight, so they get into trouble with the police. Because of the trouble, the police are watchful and suspicious. Because they are suspicious, they target Koreans and more crimes are uncovered. Once you’re marked as a Bad Korean, it’s one thing after another. Teachers don’t like you. Grades suffer. Opportunities to make a living are limited. You live in a ghetto in poor housing. Because you’re in poor housing you’re accused of being dirty. On it goes, in a downward spiral of prejudice and discrimination.

But Mozasu’s pride remains and he has an instinct for business. Eventually he finds a career in one of the few paths open to him: the gambling arcades where people sit in front of machines playing pachinko. The pachinko parlours closed during WWII but re-opened soon after. Managing a pachinko parlour is not a respected profession. It’s not like going to university in Tokyo or having a career in finance. But it is a line of work where Mozasu is permitted to get ahead. 80% of pachinko parlours in Japan are owned by ethnic Koreans.

“Is it so terrible to be Korean?”

It’s a question that comes up frequently. It hounds Noa all his life. Mozasu has a thicker skin to protect him, though racism and discrimination never quite leave him alone. But “racism” and “discrimination” are big words, they obscure the truth that is found in the details. As much as it delivers a huge and necessary history lesson, “Pachinko” is a book that’s full of details. The particular shame of being an unmarried girl impregnated by a yakuza. The specific insults and bullying that Mozasu experiences at school. The indignity that his son Solomon endures on his birthdays when he has to keep applying for permission to stay in the country where he was born. The fate of Sunja’s husband who hasn’t properly adopted the national religion. The specific ways in which some Japanese people dislike Korean food. A Japanese girlfriend with a fetish for Korean men. The tricky and untrustworthy workplace behaviour of colleagues who would prefer to sacrifice the Korean guy if someone has to fall. And speaking of the workplace, an impeccably polite and professional meeting whose rotten interior is exposed by a furtively wiped hand.

Marketers & semioticians: here’s why you should read “Pachinko”.

If you enjoy privileges of class and ethnicity, or if you’re a little hazy on the history of Korea and events in East Asia during WWII, this book is for you. The intimate, human details will help you to look outside of your comfortable bubble and appreciate everyday encounters with racism and discrimination. They will show you what it means to struggle with conflicts of identity and how those conflicts can shape your life. Meanwhile, the big, historical story, which starts in 1910, transports you through WWII, and then through and beyond Japan’s “economic miracle” of 1955 to 1975, is an education in its own right. I spent a lot of time looking up historical accounts, biographies, photos, artworks and maps in an attempt to improve my understanding of world events that take place in this novel and are mostly neglected by the West. If you don’t know about any or all of this stuff, you need to know. “Pachinko” is a long book and there’s an amount of homework but you’ll be a better, more informed and humane marketer by the end.

“Pachinko” by Min Jin Lee (2017) is published by Head of Zeus. I read the paperback edition.

I’ll put the history.com link in the comments.

#korea #japan #china #war #identity #conflict #discrimination #prejudice #politics #religion #nation #family #immigration