I shouldn't spoil the story for those who plan to read the book or watch the show later, but let me share what I thought about the novel. To be honest, almost all episodes told in this novel were somehow familiar to me because I'm originally from Japan and I have a few friends who are indeed 3rd generation of zainichi Koreans. I've grown up in Japan between 70s' to early 90s' until I came to the states. I've also (unfortunately) witnessed actual brutality of Japanese people several times. So, I can tell, though it is a fiction, everything told in this story is very realistic.
Why I thought of Sung for "Koh Hansu," who is not like how Sung is at all? Sung is 2nd generation of Korean-American while Hansu is first generation of Korean-Japanese from Jeju. There are not many things in common. But in my imagination especially near the last part of the novel, Hansu looks like Sung. There is another strong character in the novel, who is more like Sung, in my opinion. Noa, who is a biological son of Hansu's, has a lot more things in common with Sung. But I still wish to see Sung performing Hansu. (I just realized "Han" maybe a short form of "Hansu.")
It was coincident, but after finishing this audible, I watched "Crazy Rich Asian." It's not related story at all, but to me, it's kind of Asian-American 2.0. While most of Asians I met in person are not as rich as them, I've seen/heard a little bit about those super rich families. And indeed, Singapore and HK are richer than USA and Japan now -- in terms of GDP per capita. Of course, it's hard to make a fair comparison in every aspect, but even among only Asian countries, Japan is not even in top 3 now.
I used to watch this kind of TV dramas in Japan in 80s' -- People whose grand-parents' generation were so poor and had a lot of struggles, but finally reached to the point where the other countries or groups of people who used to look down on them are financially below them. We stopped seeing that type of narrative in Japan because we are now going down instead of going up (again, GPD-wise). Don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to be pessimistic about the country I am from. But it's true that now I understand how people from Western countries used to look at us up until early 90s'. That's probably how majority of Japanese these days look at the rest of Asian countries.
I don't want to sound negative or unfair to anyone here. I just wanted to share my reflection to those works I happened to enjoy during Thanksgiving weekend. After all, this blog is all about me adoring Sung.
**Image below is just a quote from instagram, unrelated to what I wrote about.
