Pachinko

I lived in Korea for 2 years in the 1970s and used to travel there for work in the '90s, visiting most recently in 2011, and while that doesn't make me an expert on all things Korean, the story this novel tells about Koreans in Japan wasn't as unfamiliar to me as it seems to have been for a lot of readers. Lack of familiarity with the cultures seems to have been part of the reason US readers have responded so well to it.

In 1977 I spent some time in Osaka with some friends. We went to a Pachinko parlor–perhaps run by Koreans, although I wasn't aware of that–and we each played for a while. I was a pin ball addict in college, so I could definitely relate. We each won a lot of balls from our games and the parlor exchanged them for bundles of ballpoint pens. Puzzled, we managed to ask what we were supposed to do with the pens. We were then guided down an alley behind the parlor where we exchanged the pens for cash.