How ‘Pachinko’ Used Language to Expand Its Sprawling, Multicultural Season 2

“Pachinko,” Min Jin Lee’ sprawling epic about Korean immigrants in Japan and America, was always going to be a difficult story to adapt. But it’s not until you dive into the very language of the Apple TV+ original that you fully understand how herculean this task was.

Starting in 1915, “Pachinko” largely follows Kim Sunja (Minha Kim), a Korean woman who later becomes her family’s matriarch. Season 1 followed her as a young woman pregnant with another man’s child, who fled from Japan-occupied Korea to the Koreatown part of Osaka...