Pachinko: From Yeongdo to Osaka

The story opens in 1915 on Yeongdo, an island facing the port of Busan, where Yangjin and her husband take in fishermen as lodgers and pray for a child who will live. Their daughter Sunja grows up bright and capable in Japanese-occupied Korea, helping in the boarding house. In 1989 the elderly Sunja comes back to Busan to scatter her sister-in-law's ashes in the sea and look for her father's grave — only to find it has been moved to make way for a car park.

Location precision: The boarding house is fictional; the pin marks Yeongdo, the island where the story places it.

One episode goes back to Koh Hansu's youth. As a teenager in Yokohama he tutors the son of a rich American family, while his father keeps the books for a yakuza boss. On 1 September 1923 the Great Kantō earthquake strikes: it destroyed almost all of Yokohama and much of Tokyo. In the chaos that followed, false rumours that Koreans were poisoning wells led vigilantes, police and soldiers to murder thousands of Koreans. Hansu survives only because the yakuza boss hides him — and takes him in to work off his father's debt.

Location precision: The series doesn't place Hansu's home within the city; the pin marks central Yokohama.

In 1930 the teenage Sunja is cornered near the market by a group of Japanese youths, and a stylish fish broker named Hansu, who speaks perfect Japanese, makes them apologise. Their romance follows, and Sunja becomes pregnant before learning that Hansu has a wife and daughters in Osaka. She refuses to be his mistress. In 1931 she marries Isak, a sickly Protestant minister staying at the boarding house, and the couple sail for Osaka from Busan's harbour in the ship's lower decks.

Location precision: The series doesn't name the market; the pin marks Jagalchi, Busan's fish market on the harbour opposite Yeongdo.

Visitor guidance: Jagalchi, today the largest fish market in South Korea, is on the Nampo-dong waterfront, across the harbour from Yeongdo.

In Osaka the couple join Isak's brother Yoseb and his wife Kyunghee in Ikaino, a crowded district of small factories where speaking Korean in public draws suspicion. Ikaino was real: it grew into Osaka's great Korean neighbourhood after a direct ferry from Jeju Island opened in 1922 and brought migrants in their thousands. Here Sunja's sons Noa and Mozasu are born, Isak is jailed in 1938, and Sunja and Kyunghee keep the family going by selling kimchi in the market. The name Ikaino was removed from the map in 1973.

Location precision: The family's home is fictional; the pin marks Ikuno Korea Town, in the heart of former Ikaino.

Visitor guidance: Ikuno Korea Town centres on the Miyukidori shopping street, a walk from Tsuruhashi or Momodani stations; Tsuruhashi's market sells kimchi under the railway tracks.

As American bombing of Osaka begins, Hansu moves Sunja's family to a farm in the countryside. Yoseb, though, has gone to work in a factory in Nagasaki, and on 9 August 1945 he is there when the atomic bomb explodes over the city. He survives, but with severe burns to his face. Between 60,000 and 80,000 people in Nagasaki died of the bomb by the end of 1945; some 1,500–2,000 of them were Koreans, many brought to Japan as conscripted workers.

Location precision: Yoseb's factory is fictional; the pin marks the hypocentre of the bomb.

Visitor guidance: Hypocenter Park and the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum are side by side in the Urakami district.

Noa, the quiet, studious son, wins a place at university in Tokyo, which the family can only afford with Hansu's money. In 1951 a girlfriend lets slip what he has never been told: Hansu is his real father. Noa confronts him, comes home briefly and then disappears. He resurfaces in Nagano, in the mountains of central Japan, under the Japanese name Ogawa Minato, cutting himself off from his family and his Korean identity. In the novel, the final part of the saga opens with Noa's new life here.

Location precision: The series doesn't say where in Nagano Noa lives; the pin marks the city centre.

The family's last generation is Solomon, Mozasu's son, a sharp young financier at an American firm, sent from New York to Tokyo in the bubble years to close a land deal with an elderly Korean woman who won't sell. He uses his grandmother to win her over, then sabotages his own deal and is fired. Searching for his childhood friend Hana, he ends up near Uguisudani Station. The first season ends with interviews with real Zainichi Koreans, filmed in 2021, who lived through the history the series dramatises.

Location precision: Solomon's firm and the land deal are fictional; the pin marks Uguisudani Station, where he searches for Hana.