Apple TV Drama Pachinko with Youn Yuh Jung, Lee Min Ho, Jin Ha, and Anna Sawai Gets March 25, 2022 Release Date and First Batch of Promos Drop

So this show is not being billed as a K-drama in the traditional sense, upcoming Apple TV drama Pachinko is based on a New York Times bestselling novel by a Korean-American writer with a story starting in post-war Korea and then moving to Japan and the US following four generations of a Korean family. I would say the Japan setting may even take up the majority of the story. But it’s getting attention for the casting Youn Yuh Jung and Lee Min Ho as part of the sprawling cast including Japanese and US stars Anna Sawai and Jin Ha and many more. The drama will premiere on March 25, 2022 and the streaming platform released a batch of stills and also opened the landing page on the site. Lee Min Ho is featured heavily but his character remains just one key role in the story line so his fans expecting him to be the male lead that will not be the case so don’t expect lots of screen time for any particular character with the exception of the female lead who goes from child to teenager to mom to family matriarch. The drama is for sure a prestige project and I hope it adds another layer of success and differentiation in the expanding world of Korean shows.


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Apple TV Drama Pachinko with Youn Yuh Jung, Lee Min Ho, Jin Ha, and Anna Sawai Gets March 25, 2022 Release Date and First Batch of Promos Drop — 47 Comments

  1. Pingback: Apple TV Drama Pachinko with Youn Yuh Jung, Lee Min Ho, Jin Ha, and Anna Sawai Gets March 25, 2022 Release Date and First Batch of Promos Drop - Kpopnchill - All About K-pop News

  2. the audience is tired of his rich man roles in designer suits! either he is typecast or has very limited range, and i think it’s the latter. all other hallyu actors have branched out and challenged themselves except for him.

    • hopefully in his upcoming drama with gong hyo jin he plays the astronaut character. otherwise if he plays the space tourist aka rich person then it’ll be his 20382943th role in expensive suits. when will he play an average character? 🙁

    • ‘audience is tired of his rich man roles in designer suits..’

      Mind to share the source of statistics that your statement is based on?

      Dont generalize your opinion like it represents the voice of the majority.

      I have yet to get enough of LMH in rich man roles & designer outfit.

      If LMH can only do one drama each year, as an audience, i dont give a damn about what is good for his career or not, i just want to enjoy watching him in any kind of well-made dramas. During this pandemic, i prefer light-hearted, feel good romance over melodramatic stressful shows, horror, zombies, politic, historical etc.

    • Você está por fora. Todos os papéis de LMH, sua interpretação é impecável. O último que assisti com ele foi “Faith” O qual ele é um general subordinado do rei, e mais uma vez ele foi perfeito. Quando você faz um comentário como este, você deve colocar a fonte a qual você se baseia. Você não deve nem ter assistido todos os doramas com ele, para falar tamanha idiotice. Fica a dica, pesquise melhor antes de falar besteira.

    • Um, I’m part of the audience and I’m definitely not tired of seeing him period. He’s not even remotely limited in range. He’s funny, he’s dramatic, he’s goofy, he’s sexy, he’s played a poverty stricken character in Gagnam Blues (pretty sure I spelled that wrong) and did it perfectly. Not sure there’s a character he can’t play. He’s said before he wants to branch out but sometimes people do get typecast. And honestly, just about every K-drama I’ve watched had the lead as a rich guy, unless they were in the military, but I’m still making my way through a lot of them so…speak for yourself.

    • Have you watched his all works?? Because his works include Gangnam blues and faith too. Should have done homework without opening your mouth bestie

    • Since when does “rich” define a character’s personality? Are all rich characters the same?

      Plus Hansu isn’t even a romanticized character. Growing up, he did not have any clothes except for the one on his body. He was also a victim of domestic abuse from his drunkard father. And once he grew up, he fought his way through to the top of the biggest crime syndicate in japan, the yakuza, because gaining power through crime was the only way for him to survive in colonist Japan as a Korean. In the end, he turns into a j*rk with many mistresses and literally beats the world out of a prostitute and disfigures her for life just because she asked him to buy her something when he was in a “bad mood”.

      The writer has written the character after 30 years of extensive research and interviews with real yakuza gangsters. The characters in Pachinko are not flat 2-dimensional characters like those in kdramas. To begin with, Pachinko itself isn’t a kdrama.

      Stop viewing Pachinko through the lens of a kdrama audience because this is not a “sweet, swoon-worthy, romantic love story” between a rich man and a poor woman which is the most typical plot of a majority of mainstream kdramas. It really is a disgrace to the book itself.

  3. Certainly. I expect LMH to be in at most 2 to 3 eps as the middle aged Hansu. Another Korean actor will play the older Hansu opposite Youn Yuh Jung. The majority of the story takes place in Japan. Expect a lot of Japanese instead of Korean.

  4. So basically like Oshin but Korean American? Anyone watched Oshin? Guess not. Even I watched it when I was 2-3 years old and that was 27 years ago.

  5. Don’t know what is Oshin. Pachinko is about ethnic Koreans living in Japan during Japan’s colonial rule of Korea, WW II, and the Korean War. They faced severe discrimination and couldn’t really find any decent jobs. Some hid their ethnicity and passed off as Japanese. Some, like Hansu, turned to organized crime and terrorized their own people. Some operated shady Pachinko parlors, which is what the protagonist Sunja’s son did. Her family climbed out of poverty but was never accepted as Japanese. Her Japanese born sons and grandson were still considered foreigners. Solomon, her US college grad grandson, became disillusioned and finally joined the family Pachinko business. The novel is an interesting read and I highly recommend it.

    • Pachinko is a good read and topped a bunch of end-of-year best book lists. This is less a kdrama and more a book adaptation.

      I read the book a few years ago so my memory is dim: was Hansu middle-aged when he embarked on an affair with Sunja? I thought he was a young man at the start.

      • Hansu was in his mid thirties when they met. He was married to a Japanese woman and had 3 daughters. The book doesn’t go into details of his background, just that he moved to Osaka with his father when he was 12. His father was an alcoholic and beat him when he was drunk. He joined the Yakusa as a young man. When Sunja met him he was already a boss with his own gang.

      • Hansu was in his mid thirties, a married man with 3 daughters, when he met the teenage Sunja. He’s about 20 years her senior.

  6. I want to watch it, but…. Need I have to subscribing apple+ to.watch? I already subscribed so many platform from netflix, disney+ and viki
    also VIU. lmaoooo…

  7. Last photo with side profile very unflattering. Double chin and puffy cheeks. He has the type of face that doesn’t age gracefully. His tummy looks suspiciously protruding too. Shout-out to prosthetics dept for stuffing pads to his tummy to make him look like middle-aged pot belly uncle.

  8. Whhaaaa?? some people on here are complaining about his double chin in the last photo? WT…you have double vision issues?

  9. @kay. Hansu is a villain, not sure if this role is LMH getting out of his comfort zone. Has he played a baddie before?

    Hansu is a Yakusa, who are known to be charming but ruthless. Hope the drama doesn’t sanitize him and show his cruel side. He beat a prostitute to near death and disfigured her just because she wanted him to buy her an expensive gift when he was in bad mood.

    The promo seems to depict this as a forbidden love between Hansu and Sunja. But imo he never loved her. He was attracted to her innocence and youthfulness. After finding out she was pregnant he offered to put her up as one of his mistresses. She refused and he just abandoned her and disappeared, leaving her to face a life of disgrace. He took care of her family in Osaka because she bore him his only son Noa.

  10. I don’t still understand why they cast a Japanese actor as Mozasu. He is Korean born to two Koreans in the book and wouldn’t look Japanese, his son might. Also, all these costumes are confusing me….pretty sure Hansu wouldn’t be wearing a suit when he met Sunja for the first time.

  11. Você está por fora. Todos os papéis de LMH, sua interpretação é impecável. O último que assisti com ele foi “Faith” O qual ele é um general subordinado do rei, e mais uma vez ele foi perfeito. Quando você faz um comentário como este, você deve colocar a fonte a qual você se baseia. Você não deve nem ter assistido todos os doramas com ele, para falar tamanha idiotice. Fica a dica, pesquise melhor antes de falar besteira.

  12. Eu amo o ator, seja qual for o personagem, herdeiro general, rei, justiceiro, policial, ele é perfeito, já assisti quase todos os trabalhos dele, é meu coreano favorito, vou sempre torce por ele, independente do personagem que ele fizer, esperando ansiosa pela estreia so não sei a onde assistir, boa sorte Lee Min Ho.

  13. People in the comments face shaming someone who is worldwide known for his looks and has already accomplished things that you can’t even in your next seven births. Stay pressed, keep crying nobody gives even a flying f*ckk to you or your opinion ? I can bet y’all must be really u*ly IRL. Now go straight, take a right turn and FO? or can F*CK YOURSELF!!!!

  14. This is the most insensitive set of comments I’ve ever seen. How about all of you not watch Pachinko since y’all can’t seem to stop hating on this man unnecessarily? I guess you’ll watch it anyway cause that’s what y’all do everytime: says he’s repulsive but you can’t stop watching his work either.

  15. There’s something known as “character appearance” if you ignorant haters didn’t know. And god forbid these hallyu stars take on roles that have an appearance deviating from the “ideal kdrama lead” look, cause they’ll get body-shamed and face-shamed like this.

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