KUALA LUMPUR, March 25 — The much-anticipated drama Pachinko will be premiering today on Apple TV+. Here’s what you need to know about what promises to be an international draw.

Just for reference: What is pachinko?

Pachinko is a kind of arcade game that plays like a sophisticated kind of pinball while obscuring its true purpose as a gambling machine. This is to get around Japan’s ban on gambling.

The show isn’t about the game. It is, however, a neat parallel to how ethnic Koreans made a life in Japan — by obscuring their identity and origins in a bid for survival.

No, it’s not about gambling

It’s based on a book of the same name by Lee Min-jin that follows four generations of a Korean family that uproots to Japan and their experience living through the war and Japanese colonisation.

The primary reason to watch this

If you like a good drama, Pachinko is a good watch and is helped by it being expertly condensed into eight episodes. The cast is excellent and while K-drama fans who like their fare with a little more meat would appreciate this, so long as you can embrace subtitles Pachinko is something anyone can appreciate.

The showrunner wasn’t sure she was the right person for it initially

Soo Hugh who wears three hats in the show — showrunner, writer and executive producer — was initially reluctant to take the project on as she felt it was almost too personal for her.

Yet it was her background as a Korean-American that helped inform her perspective and understand the challenges and life experience of being an immigrant depicted in the Pachinko novel.

It’s not a period piece

While the story follows the family across generations, Hugh was determined that she was not going to make a period piece. She wanted as much as possible to make the show feel current, present day.

While it was risky, Hugh decided to tell the story in a non-linear format to keep past and present integrated to create a sort of dialogue between generations.

Hugh said, "I wanted to cross cut time periods because I thought there was a bigger conversation to be had.” 

By showing Sun-ja’s timeline alongside her descendant’s "it gives an opportunity to talk about generational sacrifice. When Sun-ja does one thing in her timeline, you can see how it reverberates into the present day.”

A love letter to Koreans past and present

Hugh also said the story had personal meaning to many Koreans whose families had lived through the time of the Japanese occupation. 

"This story of 20th century Korea: that’s the story of my mother, my grandmother, my father, my grandfather, right? This is stuff they lived through; that all Koreans lived through in the 20th century. And so knowing that it became both a burden and a challenge.”

She also said that in the present time, so many people can relate to Pachinko. "That experience with the diaspora of immigrants is one so many people can relate to… I think we need these stories more than ever because it’s a reminder of where we’ve come from.”

Fans of Lee Min-ho will have an entire episode to look forward to

Popular South Korean actor Lee Min-ho enthusiastically auditioned for the role of Koh Han-su who plays both a love interest as well as a villain in the story. 

Hugh said, "He wanted this role. And then in our conversations, it was so clear — he understood who Han-su was. You know, he said ‘I am Han-su’.”

Conversations about Min-ho’s character, Han-su, eventually led to the writers just deciding, according to Hugh to "let’s just go there” where his backstory was concerned and thus an entire episode later in the series is dedicated to Han-su’s origin story.

A lot of the background for the episode that fleshes out Han-su’s story came from Hugh’s research on the 1923 Kanto earthquake, also called the Tokyo-Yokohama earthquake.

"That’s where Han-su was. That explains so much of how he gets to where he is when he meets Sun-ja.” 

So if you’re wondering whether the episode was sheer fanservice you can rest assured it isn’t, though fans of the actor will surely not be complaining.

Lee Min-ho is nothing like his character and that’s great

As to what Min-ho himself thought was the most challenging aspect of playing his character: "The biggest challenge for me in portraying Han-su was the way of communication. We now live in the days where we just logically communicate with each other, and we share our emotions.”

In contrast, he said, his character was not the type to share his feelings and would resort to telling Sun-ja what to do without getting her input.

"I am not that kind of person!” he laughingly emphasised, so he worried he would not clearly convey that in his depiction of Han-su.

Actor Jin Ha probably had the hardest time on the show

During the media roundtable, it sometimes felt like it was "Jin Ha appreciation day” as pretty much everyone — from his co-stars to the showrunner and directors — had a good word to say about him.

Jin Ha played Sun-ja’s grandson, Solomon Baek, and had to speak not one but three different languages in the show and for one of the languages, Japanese, he had to speak it in two different dialects. 

Youn Yuh-jung who played Sun-ja in her later years was one who had nothing but praise for her co-star.  She said she had no idea who Jin was before the show, and said her son had told her he was "very good.” 

Apparently her son had watched him in a show that wasn’t very good but Jin Ha had impressed him.

Youn laughed and said that while she didn’t believe her son then, she believed him now.

Showrunner Hugh also said she believed that Jin Ha would be one of the breakout stars of Pachinko due to his impressive performance.

Whether or not you’ve read the book, Pachinko promises to be a very good reason to tune into Apple TV+ on March 25. It currently has a seven-day free trial though recent purchasers of Apple devices will get a three-month free trial.