Pachinko Season 2 Episode 2 Review: Chapter Ten

Pachinko’s second season continues with an incredibly emotional and heartfelt hour that illustrates how frequently joy and sorrow often go hand in hand.

On one side, Sunja’s husband Isak is finally released from prison and can reunite with his wife and meet the children he barely knows. On the other, he’s dead before the hour is over, and his family’s life is irrevocably changed. (And that’s all before the American bombs start falling.)

Death lurks everywhere in “Chapter Ten,” from its opening scene in which a gang of children play wearing gas masks while one of their mothers is informed of the death of her spouse to its final moments in which air raid sirens sound as Sunja and her family are attempting to say goodbye a loved one. 

It’s also one of Pachinko’s most emotionally wrenching hours, as Sunja’s husband Isak, imprisoned for political activities for most of the past decade is finally released from jail. But the man who returns home to his family is not the same as the one who left it. Brutally injured and desperately ill, Isak is almost unrecognizable — is unrecognizable to most of his own family. 

Weak, coughing up all manner of effluvia and covered in bruises and welts, it seems immediately clear that the family’s joy over his return will be short-lived. Sunja, a problem solver at heart, springs into action, determined to find a doctor who can cure him. Kyunghee races to get word to her husband that his brother has returned — and is most likely dying.

Noa, for his part, is ready to enlist the aid a higher power, begging his pastor to pray for Isak, to ask God to heal his father. His tearful insistence that he’s tried so hard to be good, that the Lord can’t look away from his suffering this time is genuinely heartbreaking in both its sincerity and its naivete. 

Desperate to find help for Isak, Sunja turns to Koh Hansu. Who else? While Pachinko generally, and in this episode specifically, has been remarkably clear about her genuine care for her husband and her determination to cut her ex out of her life, it’s equally evident that these two are always going to be somehow drawn back into one another’s orbits.

Call it fate or an accident of circumstance, but they are bound together in many ways, no matter how much either of them might wish — or attempt — otherwise. Their love story is just so damaged and tragic, yet somehow it’s still utterly impossible to look away whenever they happen to share the screen. (I’m a sucker for tragedy, okay? Sue me.)

The only person with the money and influence to find a doctor in a city where most medical professionals have already been sent to the front lines to aid in the war effort, Hansu’s the only chance Sunja has here, though she must strike something of a devil’s bargain to get the help she needs. 

Keenly aware of the ever-encroaching threat of American bombers, Hansu’s determined to get Sunja and her sons out of the city, a move she agrees to in exchange for a doctor for Isak. Unfortunately, the Japanese medic is too late, Isak has mere hours left to live, thanks to the brutal treatment he received while in prison. They’ve literally released him simply to avoid the bother of him dying on government premises. 

“Chapter Ten’s” 1945 storyline is so compelling that it’s almost annoying whenever the show switches to its other timeline. It’s certainly difficult to argue that Solomon’s story — in which he has a heart-to-heart with the woman who refused to sell her house last season and schemes an overly complex plot to bring down Abe-san — is as interesting or emotional to watch unfold. 

(Though, truly, Pachinko can keep bringing Hye Jin Park back as often as it can find a reason. She’s wonderful.)

Solomon’s boorish behavior seems especially offputting when placed alongside scenes of the genuine suffering and tragedy his grandmother and her family are enduring back in 1945. While Pachinko is smart enough to have Solomon realize what an ungrateful whiner he is in comparison, it doesn’t do much toward making his current choices any more sympathetic. 

The show attempts to draw some interesting parallels between the two timelines, frequently featuring scenes from one era dissolving into the other, or overlapping dialogue between the two as the scenes switch. But, in all honesty, it’s unclear how we’re meant to be viewing Solomon’s plot to ruin Abe’s commercial building aspirations, or what it means in a larger thematic sense.

If you ask me, he certainly doesn’t seem to living up to any of the tenants or examples Isak proscribes.

Minha Kim and Steve Sanghyun Noh in “Pachinko” Season 2 Episode 2 (Photo: Apple TV+)Isak is one of the few characters in Pachinko’s world who is genuinely, unabashedly, and unapologetically good. It’s really hard not to love a guy who’s dying from sepsis and some unidentified respiratory situation and still takes the time to find and forgive the man who’s partially to blame for his death. 

Steve Sanghyun Noh may only get one episode to say goodbye to Isak, but he’s brilliant in every scene, simultaneously conveying a powerful mix of regret, courage, love, and emotional as well as physical agony. He’s particularly wonderful with Eunseong Kwon and Kang Hoon Kim, who play Isak’s sons, but he’s even better when he allows Isak’s mask of strength to fall while confessing to Sunja how much he still wants to live and how desperately he wants to see them grow up.

The depth of Sunja’s care for a man who entered her life as a convenient way to fix a ruinous mistake is so layered — there’s gratitude and genuine affection, and even something like real love, even if it doesn’t necessarily have the same intense passion or relentless gravity of her romance with Hansu.

The pair of them made a genuine life together, as well as a family, and that’s no small thing. Sunja’s loss, though long expected and possibly even already assumed, is still devastating, emotionally, if only because it means that, finally, she’s really on her own. 

Thank goodness for Hansu and his countryside connections, I guess.

Stray Thoughts and Observations

• It’s possible I’m just going to sing the praises of child actor Eunseong Kwon in every episode this season, but wow the scene in which Mosazu is asked if he can read, just so he can confirm the text of a telegram that tells him his father is dying was an emotional gut punch.
• Outside of the Season 1 installment that focused exclusively on Koh Hansu’s backstory, is this the first episode in which Yuh-Jung Youn (the older Sunja) doesn’t appear at all?
• Given that we’ve seen how much Paster Hu was such a father substitute for Noa, it would have been nice if “Chapter Ten” had dedicated a bit more time to the fallout from his discovery that he was the person who reported Isak’s political activities to the authorities and had him thrown in jail.
• Since Anna Sawai is in the Season 2 trailer, we’re clearly going to see Naomi again this season but…where is she?

What did you think of this episode of Pachinko? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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New episodes of Pachinko stream Fridays on Apple TV+.

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