Why a Booktrail?
1911: Shortlisted for the Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards 2018
Pachinko
What you need to know before your trail
Yeongdo, Korea 1911. In a small fishing village on the banks of the East Sea, a club-footed, cleft-lipped man marries a fifteen-year-old girl. The couple have one child, their beloved daughter Sunja. When Sunja falls pregnant by a married yakuza, the family face ruin. But then Isak, a Christian minister, offers her a chance of salvation: a new life in Japan as his wife.
Following a man she barely knows to a hostile country in which she has no friends, no home, and whose language she cannot speak, Sunja’s salvation is just the beginning of her story.
Locations
Reset- South Korea
- A: Yeongdo-gu
- B: Yeongdo - Dongsam
- C: Busan - Fish market
- North Korea
- D: Okryu Bridge
Travel Guide
Pachinko
Pachinko is a kind of Japanese arcade game. Working in a pachinko arcade was what many Koreans did when they were forced to move and find work. But Japan did not look down well on them and viewed them as second class citizens. This is the story of a peoples, with their country split into two, with their hearts also ripped apart.
Yeongdo
“A five mile islet beside the bustling port of Busan”
A historical family saga set mainly in Korea but also in Japan and a journey through several generations of a Korean family. It’s also the story of Japanese colonization, war time, Korean resilience and the heart and soul of the Korean people.
In 1910, when Hoonie was 27 years old, Japan annexed Korea”
The novel brings to life everything from the fishing village on the coast of the East Sea in early 20th-century Korea to the Korean township of Ikaino in Osaka. It’s the story of the large ethnic-Korean community in Japan, the zainichi, who remain outsiders despite their new life into their homeland.
“Korea had been colonised by twenty two years already. The younger two had never lived in a Korea that wasn’t ruled by Japan”
This is the story of Korean resilience. People wanting to move away from negative stereotypes associated with Koreans. How Japan would mistreat them and how they couldn’t return to their homeland of North Korea.
“”Where are 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. …All those people who went back to the North are starving to death or scared shitless.”
Streetview Maps
A) South Korea - Yeongdo
D) Japan - Nagasaki
Booktrailer Review
Susan: @thebooktrailer
What an interesting book on so many levels. I don’t know much about Korean history and how its people felt under occupation and it’s not something I’ve read much about apart from touching upon it in books set around WW2. But having read this book, I’m touched and amazed that this story is not more widely shared. History books may cover it but given a fictional slant and a personal one, this brings it to the level of consciousness that no history book can ever teach you.
It’s a book of an occupied and troubled country,a country at war, a country whose people feel like outsiders in their new home. A country with so many people feeling adrift in more ways than one.
Having to struggle against the odds is admirable in anyone but in a entire country, the characters in this book show what it means day to day, within a range of emotions, the family of four generations tell you so much more than I’ve ever read before.
It’s a meaty read – not one to be taken lightly – but it’s a book to be taken slowly and carefully. It’s haunting and very emotional. Well researched and I imagine more than a few tears fell as the author wrote it. I became involved with the characters and their plight – culture and country are joined by the bridge of humanity.
No review will ever really showcase the power of this novel. I’m very honoured to have been asked to read this.
Where Next?
