After a long time, I have cried my heart out after ending an series. "Pachinko" is a masterpiece, one that everyone should watch and then read and then meditate upon. It leaves us with lessons that we will hold within us for a very long time, allow us to survive, to endure.

Reading Pachinko in 2019 was my first brush with the understanding of the horrors of the Japanese occupation in Korea. To learn almost nothing about it and then to learn so much about it thanks to books, dramas like "Hymn of Death" and reading webtoons like "The Gyeongsang Mermaid", is a lesson inside how much suffering has occured and yet how much hope is left amidst all of this.

The story of Sunja and the retinue of characters that dwell in this tale will all reside within you. Not only because of how beautiful the cinematography is, how brilliant the screen adaptation of the novel is or how beautifully wound together the scenes are despite going back and forth a thousand dimensions, it is because it seems these characters lived these little lives through their acting. You feel the emotions they feel sometimes like a burden, sometimes like a relief.

Amidst all the cross cutting timelines and the recurring themes of discrimination, otherization, ostracization and suffering that spread across the 8 episodes of the series, the moments that remain with you are the hopeful ones. When Sunja gives birth to Noa, when Sunja and Kyunghee walk debtfree, when the characters dance in the opening sequence, when the ending of the 8th episode show the real life stories of the women surviving today.

Even those fleeting moments of happiness that are embedded in this long dark story shine very bright, linger inside you and stay within you.