Pachinko: Book 1, Chapter 2 Summary & Analysis

With the worldwide Depression hitting Korea, the winter of 1932 is an especially difficult one. At the same time, the widowed Yangjin has to learn how to run the boardinghouse on her own and be an employer. She can’t raise the rent on her struggling boarders, so she stretches meals out of what scanty provisions she has.

One evening, Yangjin listens as some boarders, the Chung brothers, talk politics over dinner. Japan is currently at war with China. The brothers boast on behalf of Korea’s “elder brother,” China, saying that Japan “is just a bad seed.” The young Chungs have always lived under colonial rule, so they long for another nation to prevail where their own rulers have failed. Yangjin remembers how Hoonie used to listen to such talk, then sigh and say, “No matter.” Regardless of the war’s outcome, the next day’s chores still need to be done.

A young, sickly man from Pyongyang arrives at the boardinghouse door after a long journey. Yangjin is surprised by the sight of him—he’s handsome and elegant in Western-style, professional clothing. The man introduces himself as Baek Isak and explains that his brother, Yoseb, had stayed here years ago. He’s looking for a place to stay on his way to Osaka. Yangjin knows that an evidently wealthy man like Baek Isak would expect his own room, and she reluctantly explains that they have no space for him. At the last moment, however, she tells him there’s just enough room for him to sleep beside the other lodgers, and he gratefully accepts.