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LEE Min Jin, Pachinko
(2017, Grand Central Publishing)
---YouTube
Dramatic Recitation
https://youtube.com/shorts/0oM8sPwLsAk?feature=share
(Musical Actor. Jong-sun Choi)
377 p.
Listen, man, there’s nothing you can do. This country isn’t going to change. Koreans like me can’t leave. Where we gonna go? But the Koreans back home aren’t changing, either. In Seoul, people like me get called Japanese bastards, and in Japan, I’m just another dirty Korean no matter how much money I make or how nice I am. So what the fuck? All those people who went back to the North are starving to death or scared shitless.”
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211 p.
“You boys should know how to read Korean. One day, you may return,” Hansu said.
“Yes, sir,” Noa said. He imagined that Korea would be a peaceful place where he would be normal. His father had told him that Pyongyang, where he’d grown up, was a beautiful city, and Yeongdo, his mother’s hometown, was a serene island with abundant fish in blue-green waters.
274 p.
Sunja wanted her sister-in-law to make Changho wait, but it wouldn’t have been Kyunghee if she had made him do so. Changho had loved someone who would not betray her husband, and perhaps that was why he had loved her. She could not violate who she was.
358 p.
Though he valued his wife and children as a kind of second chance, in no way did he see his current life as a rebirth. Noa carried the story of his life as a Korean like a dark, heavy rock within him. Not a day passed when he didn’t fear being discovered.
435 p.
Why does Japan still distinguish the two countries for its Korean residents who’ve been here for four fucking generations? You were born here. You’re not a foreigner! That’s insane.
435 p.
She knew as well as he did that after the peninsula was divided, the Koreans in Japan ended up choosing sides, often more than once, affecting their residency status. It was still hard for a Korean to become a Japanese citizen, and there were many who considered such a thing shameful―for a Korean to try to become a citizen of its former oppressor.
436 p.
And it didn’t hurt that Phoebe spoke very good Korean; his Korean was pathetic at best. He had visited South Korea with his father several times, and everyone there always treated them like they were Japanese. It was no homecoming; however, it was great to visit. After a while, it had been easier just to play along as Japanese tourists who had come to enjoy the good barbecue rather than to try to explain to the chest-beating, self-righteous Koreans why their first language was Japanese.
471. p.
Was it better to be an American than a Japanese? He knew Koreans who had become naturalized Japanese, and it made sense to do so, but he didn’t want to do that now, either. Maybe one day. She was right; it was weird that he was born in Japan and had a South Korean passport. He couldn’t rule out getting naturalized. Maybe another Korean wouldn’t understand that, but he didn’t care anymore.
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