Based on Min Jin Lee’s 2017 novel, the Apple TV+ series Pachinko (2022) has generated buzz from viewers and critics alike. The series has a specific relevance to the linguistic topic of code-switching, in that the drama showcases multiple instances of language alterations in variegated registers. Drawing upon Kira Hall and Chad Nilep’s historical survey of the concept’s evolution from the 1970s to the present, this study traces how Pachinko’s narrative timeline mirrors the four-stage development of code-switching: Busan of the 1910s-1930s corresponds to “speech community,” 1930s-1940s Osaka to “nation-state,” 1980s Tokyo/Osaka to “multicultural/interethnic,” and the present century, in which the drama’s audience is situated, to “hybrid/global.” But the TV drama’s bearings on the linguistic concept do not end there, for what is ultimately at stake in the tragic story of one Zainichi family’s survival extends far beyond the problem of language. Indeed, the series compels us to expand the idea of code-switching to embrace non-linguistic and historical forms of switching codes. This reveals the aporetic condition of having to code the uncodable, a switch that haunts our lives as it did every generation before us.