Characters in Pachinko

Sunja

Daughter of a Yeongdo boardinghouse keeper, whose affair with a wealthy married man and marriage to an ailing minister carry her family into a lifetime of exile in Japan.

Isak Baek

The gentle, ailing Protestant minister who marries Sunja and brings her to his brother's household in Osaka.

Koh Hansu

A wealthy, married fish broker with yakuza connections, whose money and influence shadow Sunja's family for decades.

Noa Baek

Sunja's elder son, a diligent and gifted student for whom the question of Korean and Japanese identity becomes the family's deepest wound.

Mozasu Baek

Sunja's younger son, who leaves school for the pachinko business and becomes a wealthy parlour owner in Yokohama.

Solomon Baek

Mozasu's son, raised in Yokohama and educated in the United States, who inherits the family's uneasy position between two countries.

Yangjin

Sunja's mother, who keeps the Yeongdo boardinghouse going after her husband's death.

Hoonie

Sunja's father, a quiet fisherman's son born with a cleft lip and a twisted foot.

Kyunghee

Yoseb's wife and Sunja's sister-in-law, who shares the Osaka household and the market work that keeps it fed.

Yoseb

Isak's older brother, a factory foreman in Osaka whose household takes Sunja and Isak in when they arrive from Korea.

Daisuke Totoyama

Baek Isak

Kim

Tamaguchi

Goro

Akiko

Yumi

Mieko

Bingo

Hideo Takano

Risa Iwamura

Koichi

Ume

Haruki Totoyama

Ayame