‘Pachinko’ returns: In conversation with showrunner Soo Hugh and actor Jin Ha

Ahead of the second season’s release, actor Jin Ha and showrunner Soo Hugh reflect on Pachinko, the incredible source material they worked with, and charting a new path for Solomon Baek

Any time a book is adapted for the screen, debates and discussions are aplenty. Does the show or the film manage to recreate the magic of the book? Are the characters how you imagined them to be, as you fervently turned the pages of your copy? And most importantly, does the adaptation stay faithful to its source material and choose not to deviate from plotlines, set in ink?

For a book as celebrated and revered as Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko, these questions have always loomed large over the TV series adaptation, which is now back for a second season. Creative liberties were aplenty in season one, the biggest being the show choosing to do away with the linear narrative structure of the book and instead simultaneously focussing on its central protagonist Sunja in the past and her grandson Solomon Baek in the present.

It seems rather befitting that we get to interview Soo Hugh, the showrunner, along with actor Jin Ha, who plays Solomon. “What was most interesting in the writers room for this season was Jin Ha’s Solomon,” Soo Hugh smiles and points to his star. “We went through most of Solomon’s storyline from the book in season one, and worked on taking this forward for season two. For the past however, focussed on Sunja, we still had a strong foundation with the book,” she explains.

Hugh has previously worked on shows The Terror, The Whispers, and The Killing, to name a few. For Pachinko, which debuted in 2022, she has been credited as showrunner, executive producer, writer and also acknowledged as the visionary who has adapted the series from the acclaimed novel of the same name.

In the first season, we see Solomon take on a temporary move from the US to Japan for his career, where he finds his ideals of fairness challenged, all while grappling with an identity struggle. He might be a swashbuckling man in finance, but we also see him in the context of a son and grandson – in a family where his Ivy league education and professional success is the source of much pride and joy. In the new season, Solomon is a lot more disillusioned and wary, knowing what it takes to chart out the path he has chosen. He is able to perceive his place in the world, is coming to terms with his identity, and is resigned to the fact that not all is fair and a lot is political.

“We were on sort of a cliff’s edge with the present day storyline. Solomon’s storyline is really tricky: it is both subtle and delicate, and yet loud and expressive. This was probably the biggest challenge; and we constantly asked ourselves what we could do with him,” says Soo Hugh.

In a defining moment for Solomon from season one, we see him run out into the rain after a rather crucial encounter at work. His colleague Naomi (played by Anna Sawai) sees him soon after, dancing with gay abandon in front of a group of musicians busking on the road.