The Big Picture

Pachinko Season 2 has Sunja reuniting with her husband, Isak, as betrayal surfaces, impacting their family.
Kim portrays Sunja’s journey from the 20s to motherhood in Pachinko Season 2.
Kim discusses preparing for her role, Sunja’s feelings for Hansu, and working with young actors.

Season 2 of Pachinko is going strong as we dive into the second episode of the season. In it, Sunja (Youn Yuh-jung/Minha Kim) is finally reunited with her husband Isak (Noh Sang-hyun) from her past, though the reveal of who betrayed him also comes out and hits the family hard. Meanwhile Solomon (Jin Ha) beings a bitter battle against Abe-San (Yoshio Maki) after convincing the grandmother who lives in the Osaka house to sell finally. Serving as our main protagonists for the series, Sunja and Solomon’s stories have always paralleled each other, even though Sunja’s starts around the 20s and 30s while Solomon’s starts in the late 80s. Although Sunja’s struggles are more tangible, working hard as the sole earner in her family of four to keep everyone fed, that doesn’t invalidate Solomon’s troubles with his job and finding his place as a Japanese-Korean in the cutthroat business world.

Minha Kim’s young Sunja is scrappy, hard-working, and determined; she is willing to swallow her pride to keep her family fed and stays loyal to her husband despite his years in political prison. Although Youn Yuh-jung is a powerhouse in Pachinko, Kim is a revelation in her own right as she acts as our guide to Sunja’s past. We spoke with Minha Kim about this new season of Pachinko and the journey that Sunja goes on now that war has arrived to Osaka. Kim discussed preparing for her role, especially with the time jump between seasons. She also discusses Sunja’s feelings about Hansu (Lee Minho) and if she still has feelings for him. She goes into what it’s like playing the character as a mother and working with the young child actors, and also whether or not Youn Yuh-jung’s performance as the older Sunja affects her.

Read the full interview below or watch it in the video above!

How Minha Kim Prepared for ‘Pachinko’s Season 2 Time Jump

COLLIDER: What was it like returning to Season 2 for filming, and what was it like filming this new chapter of Sunja’s life?

MINHA KIM: It’s always great to be back on the set of Pachinko. It feels like I’m back at home. I was so happy to see all of the cast and crew back together. It just felt like a family. But there is a time jump, so I had a big responsibility to portray it. I had to prepare a lot, and I had to ask a lot of things to my mom and my grandmother. I had to have more time to understand Sunja more and try to figure out the whole relationship with my family members and Hansu [Lee Min-ho]. But still, I was happy to be on the set of Pachinko again.

Does Sunja Still Have Feelings for Hansu After Everything?
Image via Apple TV+

I’m curious about Sunja’s feelings for Hansu, because she’s seen this uglier, more violent side to him, but she also seems drawn to him. Do you think she still has feelings for him and she still loves him or is it more tied to the fact that they have a son together and they are both protective of him?

KIM: Of course, she has an amount of feelings and emotions towards Hansu, which is so complicated that she cannot make any definition. In the process of preparing for the character, I’m always trying to figure out, “What are the feelings for Hansu?” I just didn’t know. I couldn’t sort it out because it’s so complicated. Have you ever experienced the feelings when you love someone too much? It is so painful, so eventually, it leads to hatred. It’s just the power of that — it reached that amount of energy.

So I think in Episode 1, when they met each other, they reunited in Episode 1. She was shocked right after she saw him, but at some point, I guess Sunja had imagined it all the time. I think she has thought of him almost every day because it’s Hansu, who made her go on that journey. In the second season, they are parents now. They have the kids to raise. At some point, Sunja realized and admitted that she cannot live without him. It’s just part of her life. So, yeah, the relationship is getting deeper and, I think, stronger at the end of the episodes.

Minha Kim on Playing Sunja as a Mother and Working With Younger Actors
Image via Apple TV+

In Season 1, you play Sunja as a young woman, but in Season 2, you’re really diving into her role as a mother. What was it like changing that performance and also working with the younger actors who play her sons?

KIM: It was my biggest challenge, for me, to meld the time difference in my character because I wanted to maintain Sunja’s disposition and personality that are shown in the first season and make the difference. At the same time, I just wanted to portray some of her personality in a different way. I mean, 14 years have passed, so everything changed. She was thriving, she was raising the kids, and everything changed. She got stronger. I believe in the power of time. When the time goes by, when the time flows, we naturally learn something from life. So, I just wanted to meld it in my character.

Working with the small children was lovely. I always learn a lot of things from them, and I always get a good energy from them. Whenever I’m very exhausted on the set, right after I see them, I get a lot of positive energy. It was awesome. I miss them a lot.

How Much Does Youn Yuh-jung’s Performance Influence Hers?

Now that Season 1 is in the past, did you have a chance to watch Youn Yuh-jung’s performance as Sunja in the future as the older version of her, and did that affect your portrayal in Season 2 at all, or did you try to kind of keep them separate?

KIM: I tried to keep it separate. She is brilliant. I respect her so much. That’s why I just wanted to isolate myself from her. Because if I’m continuously aware of her performance, not of her character, I just wanted to see her as an older version of Sunja, but I didn’t want to see her in a method performance way. I just wanted to keep it separate. I tried to focus on my situation and the scenes where Sunja is stuck on.

New episodes of Pachinko Season 2 premiere on Apple TV+ every Friday.

Watch on Apple TV+