Minha Kim interview: On starring in the second season of ‘Pachinko‘, the ensemble cast, and more

After a critically acclaimed performance in season 1, Minha Kim is back as the protagonist of Pachinko, a sweeping tale chronicling four generations of a family as they navigate love, loss, and survival

When we first see Sunja, played by Minha Kim, in season two of Pachinko, she is standing in a crowded market place in Osaka. We actually hear her before we see her; she is calling out to the bustling crowds in the market and asking them to buy her kimchi. She waxes eloquent about how tasty it is, and finally adds, ‘Come, get a taste of home’.

In 2021, when Minha Kim began filming for season one of Pachinko, it was only her second professional acting role, and first american production. The young actor took on the challenge of bringing alive the main character of author Min Jin Lee’s celebrated novel Pachinko – a sweeping, expansive chronicle of four generations of a family as they navigate love, loss, grief, and survival. Following a critically acclaimed performance in the first season of the show, Minha was nominated for a Gotham Award for Outstanding Performance in a New Series, and was honoured as Breakout in TV at the 2022 Asian American Award’s Unforgettable Gala. Earlier this year, she was also seen in the music video ‘Come back to me‘, a song by RM of BTS.

Returning for a second season, Minha Kim, in an interview with The Hindu, says she approached the character the same way that she did in the first season, except that the show takes a time jump that she had to be mindful of. “I think the most important part for me is to feel genuinely, and in an authentic way. A time jump meant that I had to maintain her personality, and work on building my own stories of Sunja,” she says. 

In season two of Pachinko, the year is 1945. In Osaka, which is in the throes of a war, Sunja is now physically and emotionally a lot more mature, and has much on her shoulders — her husband has been missing, possibly rotting in prison, she has two young sons to look after, money is tight, and rations are even harder to come by. She is worried about her mother, who is still in Japanese-occupied Korea, her home which she left years ago to make her way to Osaka with her husband. The remnants of her ‘home’, one that she refers to in her first appearance in the show, now lie in the Kimchi she makes, and the Korean she converses in with her sons. 

In awe of what Minha brought to the character, director Leanne Welham described her as a ‘smart actor’. Stating that it was not easy to come onto a second season and play a character like Sunja, Leanne says Minha managed to embody all that experience without it feeling heavy, given how intelligent and intuitive she is. “She has this luminance about her when she’s on camera, which is unusual,  and amazing to work with,” she adds. Leanne, Arvin Chen, and Sang-il Lee have been credited as directors for the new season, which is in Japanese, Korean and English.

Minha says that while Sunja does shoulder great responsibilities, the love she carries ensures that it never feels like a burden to her. Sunja’s emotional turmoil, and how she deals with being a normal woman faced with extraordinary circumstances, was constantly on her mind while filming the show. 

“Every situation that she is facing is quite hard. What I tried to do as the character is to just accept it and admit it, something that I feel Sunja is very good at. She just... goes on,” Minha says.