Min Jin Lee’s ‘Pachinko’ is a novel which depicts the lives of Baek family in a detailed manner. The story starts with Hoonie who has a cleft palate and twisted foot. He weds the poor Yangjin and lives in Yeongdo. They survive by managing a boarding house and they have a daughter Sunja. Hoonie dies when Sunja is only thirteen years old. After his death, Yangjin and Sunja look after the boarding house. When Sunja is seventeen years old, she develops a sexual relationship with affluent fishmonger Koh Hansu and she becomes pregnant.
Around a similar time, the generously minister-in-training, Baek Isak visits the boarding house and stays there. Not long after his appearance, Isak becomes sick with tuberculosis, and he has been taken care by Yangjin and Sunja. Later, the fishmonger Hansu informs Sunja that he has got married to a woman in Japan and he cannot wed her. At this moment, Baek Isak has become fine from his illness and says that he will wed Sunja and bring up her son as his own son. He decides to take them to Japan. Sunja moved to Osaka with Baek Isak, there they remain with Isak’s brother Yoseb and sister-in-law Kyunghee. Isak starts serve as a priest. In any case, the family battles with Japanese view of Koreans and their restricted chances. In the end Sunja gives birth to a child and named as Noa.
Catastrophe later happens to the family, nonetheless, when Isak is constrained into jail for an exaggerated charge from the Japanese government because of his Christian convictions. Isak is detained for quite a long time and is just discharged on his deathbed. Before he kicks the bucket, Isak visits to see his family one last time. After the death of Isak, Kyunghee and Sunja begin a new business. They vend Kimchi at a market to support in additional money for the family.
Not long after they start their business, they are inquired by a man named Kim Changho to produce kimchi at his boss' eatery day by day, for a robust compensation. Regardless of Yoseb's faltering, the ladies concur. At that moment Sunja meets her previous lover Hansu who has come to disclose to her that he is the owner of the eatery and that he expected to shift her and her family to the countryside to protect them from the war because the war is proceeding with full force. Sunja goes reluctantly to the homestead; Hansu likewise finds Sunja's mother and conveys her to the countryside. When the war ends, Noa communicates his enthusiasm for going to college. After at long last being acknowledged to Waseda University, Noa asks Hansu, he sees him as a family companion, to pay for his college expenses. Hansu wholeheartedly concurs, rejecting Sunja's idea to in the long run pay him back. Before long, Noa has gone to Tokyo. Simultaneously, Mozasu detests school to an ever increasing extent, and after an episode of battling, verifies work at a nearby pachinko parlor.
The two young men feel they have discovered their specialties. Noa has started to date a Japanese young lady, Akiko, while Mozasu is in love with Yumi a Korean girl. Before long, however, Noa's life is ruined in Tokyo. Akiko shows up excluded to a supper Noa was having with Hansu; a short time later, she discloses to Noa he did not need her to meet his father in light of the fact that Hansu was a criminal. Noa rushes home to inquire as to whether Hansu truly was his father. Sunja reveals the truth to Noa that he is the son of Hansu.Noa has been troubled by his paternity; Noa departs from school and his family, venturing out to Nagano, Japan to start another life. There, he accepts a Japanese personality and name, and gets a new line of work at a pachinko parlor. He weds and has kids, never visiting his mother however sending her money for her survival.
At the similar period, Mozasu weds Yumi, and they have a child, Solomon. At the point when Solomon is an infant, Yumi is hit and murdered by a taxi driver. Mozasu and his family move to Tokyo, they have taken Sunja with them to take care of the young child. Then later, Hansu educates Sunja that he has found the place where Noa lives. They travel to Nagano, where Sunja meets her son in his working place. Noa vows to restore an association with his mother, yet before long, Sunja learns her child committed suicide all not long after her visit. When his child is an adolescent, Mozasu begins dating a Japanese divorcee named Etsuko. Hana is Etsuko’s daughter who comes to live with her.
At Yangjin's memorial service, Hana and Solomon become close with each other; the adolescents engaging in sexual relations with each other until Hana has left her mother's condo and vanishes. Solomon goes to school in America, where he meets a Korean-American lover, Phoebe. After his completion of graduation, Solomon and Phoebe return to Tokyo, where Solomon has an occupation with a British firm, however Phoebe abhors living in Japan. Solomon visits the Tokyo hospital to see Hana but she has passed away of AIDS. After Solomon's firm requests that he submit a degenerate managing an old Korean lady, he is terminated. Then, Phoebe leaves Solomon, and he understands he needs to stay in Japan and carry out the pachinko business with his father.
In the end of the story, Sunja is visiting the grave of Isak. There, a gravedigger Uchida reveals her that Noa kept on visiting Isak's grave after he realized that Isak had not been his own father. When Uchida leaves the graveyard, Sunja she has kept a keychain with the picture of Noa and Mozasu. She buries it in the grave of Isak. She then comes back to Kyunghee, her best companion who is holding up at the home where they live together.
