ELISE HU, HOST:
You're listening to IT'S BEEN A MINUTE from NPR. I'm Elise Hu. When the novel "Pachinko" came out in 2017, my guest today didn't want to read it despite all the buzz.
SOO HUGH: Well, I did have an excuse. I was very busy. I was finishing my last show.
HU: OK (laughter).
HUGH: I was - at the same time...
HU: That's legit.
HUGH: That's legit. At the same time...
HU: That is Soo Hugh. She is the writer and showrunner of the much-anticipated series "Pachinko," based on the bestselling novel by Min Jin Lee. The show's just premiered on Apple TV+. Being busy wasn't the only reason Soo waited to read the book.
HUGH: I would be wrong to say that there wasn't also some fear there in picking up the book, that as busy as I was, a part of me was also afraid to confront what the book had, which is in some ways a story of Korea in the 20th century and very much my family's story, as it is many Koreans' stories. And it's - that's terrifying to be able to confront that. So I think a part of me also resisted reading the book because of that.
HU: "Pachinko" is the story of one family through four generations across the 20th century. The story is epic yet intimate, all about their experience as Zainichi Koreans in Japan.
HUGH: So the Zainichi are Koreans who came to Japan before the end of World War II, and roughly about 2 million Koreans made their way over to Japan. And once the war ended, most of the Koreans returned back to the homeland, but 600,000 remained. And those 600,000 Koreans who remained then became the stewards of the next generation of the Zainichi community.
HU: As with any epic, we follow characters through the years, through trials and tribulations, through war and peace. And the heart of the story is Sunja.
HUGH: She starts off as a little girl who grew up in a fishing village in Busan, and then we follow her to as an older woman, reckoning with the - what her life has become.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "PACHINKO")
YOUNG YUH-JUNG: (As Older Sunja, speaking non-English language).
HUGH: We also have Hansu, who is an enigmatic businessman who lives in Japan.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "PACHINKO")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character, speaking non-English language).
HUGH: And he becomes Sunja's forbidden lover.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "PACHINKO")
LEE MIN-HO: (As Hansu) Everything and nothing.
HUGH: We have Isak, a kind pastor who arrives at just the right opportunity.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "PACHINKO")
STEVE SANGHYUN NOH: (As Isak, speaking non-English language).
HUGH: We have Solomon, Sunja's grandson, who we see in 1989. He is the fourth generation of this family. And through him, we see what the sacrifices of the past have sprouted.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "PACHINKO")
JIN HA: (As Solomon) Back-of-the-napkin calculations say 10, 15 million payday for us.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) And this landowner, her being Korean - you think that'll give you an in?
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #3: (As character) Wait. Wait. I'm confused here. I thought you were Japanese.
HA: (As Solomon) No, I just grew up there.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) You sure about this?
HU: In our chat, Soo talks about what it was like to bring "Pachinko" to the screen, what she's doing to support Asian American creators coming up behind her and why this story resonates with audiences of all backgrounds. But first, I wanted to know how Soo summoned up the courage to finally read the book.
HUGH: Well, what was so thrilling about the novel and how beautifully done it is - it's not a bleak story. And I think that's what I was afraid of. I was afraid of, on Page 1, it's going to be the story of my people suffering. But the book has a very light touch, and it loves its characters so much. And I just...
HU: Yeah.
HUGH: ...Became transported. And I think that became an anchor point - is to make sure that our characters have dignity and resilience and that the joys are just as much present in our show as some of the harder moments.
HU: Yeah. And you really feel that. There's actually - there's a lot of just life and some humor even.
HUGH: Yes. And I'm not a funny person. So thank you.
(LAUGHTER)
HU: I'm sure you're not giving yourself enough credit. All right. Well, I happened to read "Pachinko" when I was living in Seoul. I was the Seoul...
HUGH: Oh, wow.
HU: ...Correspondent for NPR. And that region, when I first moved there, it really struck me how much history is still really alive, and it almost feels like it's in people's collective memories and in their DNA. There's that Faulkner quote about how the past is never dead; it's not even past.
HUGH: Yep.
HU: And that's really true when it comes to Korea and Japan and the relationship between these two countries. It seems like the painful history isn't forgotten by Koreans. But for you, how is history kind of still really resonant?
HUGH: Well, there's history with a capital H, right? And then there's personal history, our story. And I'd learned a lot of the broad strokes of the 20th century Korean history through textbooks and classes. But the small history that - our story, that was very much new to me because there's blank spots in my family narratives. And this is something I hear from so many immigrants, not just Koreans...
HU: Yeah.
HUGH: ...Their parents' generation and their grandparents' generation not being able to speak about what happened. And some of it is because of a sense of not wanting to relive trauma.
HU: Yeah.
HUGH: And some of it is still grappling with what happened, right? It's not...
HU: Yeah.
HUGH: You know, the past is not always clear. And so it's - and when you think of Korea and Japan and this story, it - we really wanted to excavate both our story and history with a big H and weaving that into our characters' lives.
HU: What do you think it was about Japanese colonization that left such lasting scars?
HUGH: Well, it's not just Japanese colonization - then, you know, the Korean War right afterwards.
HU: Yeah.
HUGH: And Korea is a divided country still. And when you talk to Koreans who lived through that period, no one ever thought Korea would be divided for that long. Everyone thought it was temporary. It is 2022, and the country's still divided. So everything that they thought was temporary ended up being permanent. And I think that just completely unstable - destabilizes your world. Families were ripped apart, so many stories I heard about mothers and fathers being separated from their children. And I think that's a lot to work through.
HU: In terms of working through it for art, what kind of choices did you make in the dramatization of this century for television in order to communicate the complexity here?
HUGH: I think the biggest decision I made - and it affected the way I adapted the book - is I wanted to bring a sense of scale to one life. You know, so often we give this huge, epic scope treatment to people who are famous - you know, the Rockefellers, the Kennedys or superheroes who have powers that can, you know, save the world. And it was really important to me that we make sure that an ordinary girl is given the same lens as Superman, that someone who is ordinary can be just as extraordinary through a life lived well, if that makes sense.
HU: Yeah.
HUGH: So once you have that, once you stick to that mandate, then the question is how do you tell that story? And the story became bigger if it became a conversation between dialogues. And so much of this, as I explained, was excavating my own family history. And I really wanted to bring that into the show. So instead of telling the show chronologically, as the book does, I cross-cut between time periods and between generations so that we do have that crucial conversation.
HU: You mentioned you wanted to bring your own family's story into it. What details did you include, if any, that show up on screen?
HUGH: Well, I mean, when you look at Solomon - two characters in particular, Solomon, who's a third-generation grandson of Sunja - he went to America, went to college, played by the rules, got good grades, got a good job. And he thought the - you know, that ladder to social mobility was also a ladder to acceptance - emotional acceptance...
HU: Yep.
HUGH: ...Psychic acceptance. And I think it's much, much more complicated than that.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "PACHINKO")
HA: (As Solomon) I want to know why.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) They told you why. They don't think you're ready. But keep busting ahead, doing what you're doing. And next year...
HA: (As Solomon) I helped close the Teestone (ph) merger, handled Brixley's (ph) buyout - No. 1 on my year's leaderboard for two years...
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) It's not your year, OK?
HUGH: As so many immigrants' children will tell you, that climb also has a toll - an emotional toll. And that was one of things I was really interested in exploring. And the way the second character that I invented for the show, Naomi - she belongs in our present-day story - 1989 storyline. And she's a Japanese career woman in a time period where that was such an anomaly still. And in her, I very much fused my experience of being a woman and being an Asian American screenwriter in an industry that is not Asian American or necessarily always female-friendly. And in her, she's very much the distillation of my experiences.
HU: Is there a scene that you could describe that sort of illustrates what you were saying about the differences between Solomon and Naomi and how that shows up?
HUGH: So there's a scene - I believe it's in Episode 4 - Solomon walks into a conference room. Naomi is diligently working away. She's probably been at that table for hours, making sure that she has her dots - you know, i's dotted, t's crossed. And...
HU: Yeah.
HUGH: ...A third gentleman comes in and says, I have all the paperwork done. And instead of looking at Naomi, he looks at Solomon, even though Naomi is the lead in the case, right?
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "PACHINKO")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character, non-English language spoken).
ANNA SAWAI: (As Naomi, non-English language spoken).
HUGH: And Naomi tells him, I typed up the memo. Did you read the memo? And that gentleman still looks at Solomon for the answer, right? It's these little codes. It's these little acts of aggression. And I don't...
HU: Right.
HUGH: ...Think that gentleman meant disrespect to Naomi directly. It's just how he is used to processing power.
HU: The series is distinct from the book in the way that time - in the...
HUGH: Yeah.
HU: ...Way that you played with time. So the book is a very straight chronological telling of this family story, whereas you made a deliberate decision to put Solomon and his story, which takes place in the 1980s, upfront kind of against or paralleling the Sunja story. Why did you make that choice?
HUGH: As I was reading the book, which was this rapturous experience, one of the concerns I had was by telling it chronologically, which works on the novel form - but in that jump to cinematic form, it would become period, would become "Masterpiece Theatre." And I felt that by not meeting Solomon's generation until the end of the series, we would miss out on a huge opportunity to say something bigger in our show, to talk about generational sacrifice, to talk about the burdens on the - you know, on the next generation. It just felt - if we're going to tell an epic, let's tell that epic.
HU: And in the writing and development of this series, did you have any fresh conversations with your own family about your own family's history? Were there new things that you learned or came to appreciate that you maybe didn't know before?
HUGH: Yes and no. I mean, some questions - and this is the tragedy, I think, of the experience with the diaspora, is language. You know...
HU: Absolutely.
HUGH: ...I - and it's something that gives me a lot of sadness, but my primary language is English. So, you know, parents, in wanting to give their - you know, give their children all the opportunity, wanting to have their hopes and dreams realized - we became Americanized, and that meant I lost my mother tongue. You know, I can understand Korean, but speaking is much harder for me. So that conversation can't go very far - right? - without a translator. And that feels strange, to have a translator with your parent.
HU: Right. Right.
HUGH: So some conversations, but I wish it was a much deeper, more sophisticated one.
HU: And this is on top of the already huge emotional hurdle in which a lot of our immigrant parents or grandparents don't want to talk about their hardships.
HUGH: Yeah.
HU: They feel as though they came to the States and had children here so that their kids and grandkids and descendants wouldn't have to go through the sort of same survival stories that they did.
HUGH: Yeah. And I always said that an immigrant experience - and it's not just about America, you know? I feel I had amazing opportunities in this country. But at the same time, the immigrant experience all the world over is a horror story, period, because to leave your homeland to go to a country that is not yours, to be thrown into a culture and a language that you have no comprehension of - that's a horror story. And that's universal across the world.
HU: Coming up, making way for the next generation of creators.
We talked a little bit about needing translators, which reminds me that this movie is nearly all in Korean and Japanese, told through subtitles if you don't understand Korean and Japanese. And the color of the subtitles even indicate when they're speaking Korean and when the characters are speaking Japanese. So I think Korean is yellow, and Japanese is blue - unless I got that backwards, but I think that's right.
HUGH: No. Perfect.
HU: (Laughter) OK. It seems, given the source material, that you would have to film the series in those languages. But did you have to fight for that?
HUGH: No. And it was such a relief. I give a lot of credit to the networks that when the question of language came up in all of our pitch meetings...
HU: Yeah.
HUGH: ...Everyone accepted it. We've come really far on that.
HU: Yeah. I was going to say, because I remember as a kid, almost everything was in English but in like a bad-accented...
HUGH: Yes.
HU: ...English...
HUGH: Yeah.
HU: ...When we watched stories of other peoples in native countries (laughter).
HUGH: No (laughter). And, oh, it just makes you cringe, right? No.
HU: Right (laughter).
HUGH: We can't do that here. And also, it wouldn't make sense for the show because so much of this is about code switching, so much about characters who have to navigate between languages.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "PACHINKO")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character, speaking non-English language).
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character, speaking non-English language).
HUGH: If we did it in that poor English, then we wouldn't know when they switched.
HU: And did it open up casting possibilities for you, too?
HUGH: It closed off casting possibilities in some ways, right? Because all of a sudden, we need native speakers, and we need to be very authentic and vigilant about who we cast.
HU: True. True.
HUGH: So that if a character is Korean, that person really had to be fluent in Korean. If that character is Japanese, that person really had to be fluent in Japanese. There's a few characters who have to be multilingual, so we had to choose one - which one became the predominant language.
HU: Yeah.
HUGH: But then as a result, we had to cast all over the world.
HU: As we talk about the cast, this comes only a few years after Oscars so white and all these reckonings with Hollywood being so white for decades. So how important was it to you to have Korean and Korean American directors and writers work on this? So obviously, the cast is Asian, but also behind the scenes, too.
HUGH: Yeah, it was - one of the things we said is, first, let's see who's the best out there. And for this story, the best out there were Korean - right? - because at the end of the day, they felt this in their bones. Now, that doesn't mean our entire cast, our entire crew were Korean. We did have a very international crew. We have, you know, a Chinese DP and a German DP. We had an American production designer and a Korean costume designer. So it was - as well as two Korean American directors. So when you think about the makeup of our departments, it really was global because one of the things we also said about this show is this - at the end of day, although telling a very - specifically Korean story, that the show isn't Korean. The show is not Japanese. It's not American. It really needs to be a global show.
HU: Yeah. What kind of shift have you seen on that front in the entertainment industry, in terms of diversity and inclusion and being able to tell stories kind of across borders?
HUGH: I've seen a huge change. And yet, that road is still so far, you know, that's still so long, right?
HU: Yeah.
HUGH: So while we want to celebrate all that has happened and the doors being busted down and, you know, "Parasite," "Squid Game," "Thank You," "Crazy Rich Asians," you know, it's a long road. And a few years from now, we will know the answer to this question. The question is, am I just the beginning of a huge wave, or am I just one of the lucky ones?
HU: What do you think?
HUGH: I waffle back and forth. I think the storytelling amongst these filmmakers is so strong that I hope it'll last. And at the same time, more importantly, the marketplace is turning increasingly global, so that...
HU: Yeah.
HUGH: ...An audience is becoming more sophisticated in these affairs. So I'm optimistic, but I've seen that door close before.
HU: Well, you are certainly trying to keep the doors open. You announced this year an incubator - right? - called The Thousand Miles Project. Can you talk a little bit about that?
HUGH: Yeah. It's based on this Chinese proverb that the road to a thousand miles begins with one step. And I credit Universal and UCP with very much putting their money where their mouth is about wanting to bring in diverse Asian voices into the Hollywood system. I talk about how so much of my growing up wanting to be a filmmaker, and I knew very early on that I wanted to be a filmmaker, was shrouded in just questions and confusion. You know, I grew up in Maryland and - with dreams of wanting to make films. I had no idea...
HU: Yeah.
HUGH: ...What that meant. And Hollywood might as well have been, like, Jupiter or the moon, right? How to get there just seemed impossible. And so our program, we hope, demystifies - one, demystifies the process of what it takes to take that first step, and two, pays writers. Because I think until you get that first paycheck - right? - when you hold that first paycheck, I never thought I was a real writer. So I think paying people for the work they do is really important to giving them a sense of accomplishment and a sense of you are here.
HU: Coming up, making the personal universal.
Just back to "Pachinko," you mentioned that it's not specifically a Korean story or a Japanese story or an American story but really a global story, which reminded me of how recently, a critic got a lot of flak for his review of the Pixar film "Turning Red."
HUGH: Yeah.
HU: I don't know if you saw this. But, you know, it's about a 13-year-old Chinese Canadian girl. And the critic said he didn't connect with it and it seemed like the director made it for her friends and family. When you were making "Pachinko," did you think about kind of what makes this story universal or what it even means to tell a universal story?
HUGH: I didn't have to worry about it because I knew that it was going to resonate because of the story being so - having heard so many conversations and stories from other people. At the end of the day, it's funny. And I hope that person writes a review of this show. I made this show for my family, period. And in doing that, it will resonate with other people because all of us have a Sunja in our families. I don't - I think to be so limiting about whether or not a show made so personally can resonate to a wider audience just sounds - it's - I thought it was really strange, to be honest.
HU: What did your family have to say about "Pachinko" after they saw it?
HUGH: So my mother - she classically has worried about me in terms of my career choices.
(LAUGHTER)
HUGH: And for a long time...
HU: And also, if - probably if you're getting enough sleep and...
HUGH: Exactly.
HU: ...Working too hard.
HUGH: And for - exactly. For a long time, she didn't really know what a showrunner was. She was like, you know, but I don't understand. Do you do this? Do you do this? And it's hard - been hard to explain to her. And...
HU: (Laughter).
HUGH: She's watched my other shows. She's like, yeah, I like that show. It's very nice. But do you think you need to have a monster in every show?
HU: (Laughter).
HUGH: But this is the first show she's gotten so excited. So when I was in Korea shooting, she'd be like, what - where are you shooting? What scene are you shooting? You know, is - which actors are you shooting? She got so giddy and excited.
HU: Oh, wow.
HUGH: So there is definitely much more of a personal investment in this one for her.
HU: And so you were able to shoot in Korea even during the pandemic?
HUGH: Yeah. It was originally supposed to be a three-country shoot - Korea, Japan and Vancouver equally. We shot mostly in Korea, mostly in Vancouver. It was a plate shoot in Japan. And that was huge. You know, to shoot half the show in my homeland, it was...
HU: Yeah.
HUGH: That was amazing.
HU: And it has such a well-developed film industry, too. So I imagine the infrastructure to go and shoot there was pretty set up.
HUGH: Yeah, but it's very different from America in terms of just how they do it and how we do it. And that was at first one of the challenges of the show but then became really one of the more moving things about, I thought, the making of this show - is just watch how this crew and this cast, by the end of it, fuse together. And, you know, this is going to sound a little bit - I don't know - a little hokey, but it shows you that connections - people - human connections can transcend those cultural and language boundaries. I saw it firsthand. It happens.
HU: How did it show up just in the production?
HUGH: We had so many translators on set (laughter). I joked that we had more translators on set than actors on set.
(LAUGHTER)
HUGH: It was a little bit nutty at times, I have to admit. And...
HU: I want to borrow some of them sometimes for reporting.
HUGH: Oh, I'll give you some great names.
HU: I'll get some recommendations. yeah.
HUGH: By the way, translation - an art form. I have so much respect.
HU: Absolutely.
HUGH: Respect.
HU: Oh, my gosh. Absolutely.
HUGH: So when you look at the beginning of the shoot, you know, it's stilted. No one knows when to jump into the conversation. People are waiting for someone to speak and finish speaking. And it's - you know, it's unnatural, right? And you realize you're having these - some of these - you know, you have intense conversations on sets with, you know, actors about what they're doing, what this means. And at first, it's like (laughter), this is mediated through someone else. And by the end of the shoot, you know, people are - hand gestures, facial gestures, just voice tones and people cutting each other off. And that flow of expression - it was beautiful.
HU: That is. That is. OK, big question for you, and you can take it in whatever direction you want.
HUGH: (Laughter).
HU: You are telling this intimate family saga on screen, yet many of its themes are so universal. So ultimately, what did you want to say in the retelling of this book for television that might be particularly resonant today?
HUGH: I made this show during a pandemic and during so much of the Asian American violence in this country. And in some ways, making this show is a healing for me. Coming now out of it, having finished the first season, I realized that what I want this to say is, we have to know where we've come from. And I - you know, that's something we've heard before. But I've never really fully absorbed it till I did this show. Standing here in 2022, I feel like a different person 'cause I've now seen what the past was. I felt the past through my characters. I lived the past. And I just have so much more empathy now. And I feel like if we can just - if anyone can watch this show and get that same sense of openness, if anyone can watch the show and want to call home and say - just talk to their parents or their grandparents and just say, I understand, I feel like I've done some good work.
HU: Soo Hugh, the showrunner of "Pachinko," which is now on Apple TV+. Soo, thanks so much.
HUGH: Thank you.
HU: This episode of IT'S BEEN A MINUTE was produced by Andrea Gutierrez with help from Janet Woojeong Lee and Aja Drain. It was edited by Jordana Hochman. OK, listeners. Don't forget this Friday, we're back with another episode. And for that, we want to hear the best thing that happened to you all week. All you got to do is record yourself and email the file to us at ibam@npr.org. That's I-B-A-M@npr.org. All right. That's it for us. Thanks for listening. I'm Elise Hu, and I feel it would be appropriate to say goodbye in Korean. (Speaking Korean).
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