Daniel Dae Kim

Daniel Dae Kim Relishes Complex Role on ’Lost’

Oh, the mysteries of ABC’s hit series "Lost." Where are the doomed passengers of Oceanic Flight 815? How did they survive the plane crash? And why are they all so darn good-looking?

On an island full intriguing characters, Daniel Dae Kim’s Jin Kwon has been almost as confounding as the show’s cursed lottery numbers. Already one of the few Asian characters on prime-time television, Jin has not spoken a word of English all season. A risky decision, even for a show as smart as "Lost."

"I am so grateful to [executive producers] J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof for taking the chance on having a character who doesn’t speak the language for an entire season," Kim, 36, said. "I think it’s really doing a lot for what we deem acceptable on television and what we can expect the viewer to follow."

The idea to have characters who don’t speak English occurred to the producers when Yunjin Kim (no relation), who plays Jin’s wife Sun, auditioned for the role of Kate.

"She was phenomenal," Lindelof said. "It wasn’t like she was wrong for Kate, but we thought: How interesting would it be to have a character who doesn’t speak English? You would really have this opportunity to do something that doesn’t really exist on network television."

So they cast Yunjin as Sun (the role of Kate went to Evangeline Lilly) and gave Sun a husband. Kim auditioned for the role — and suddenly found himself relocating with his wife and two children to Hawaii, where the show films. As the season unfolded, Sun and Jin’s heartbreaking back-story was revealed: A tale of two innocent young people passionately in love before Jin is corrupted by Sun’s criminal father. Eventually, viewers discovered that Sun speaks English — but Jin remains confined to subtitles.

This meant Kim, who was born in Busan, South Korea, but raised in New York and Pennsylvania, had to seriously brush up on his Korean. "It was one of the biggest challenges of my career," he said. "I wasn’t fluent."

He relied on Yunjin and the show’s translator to help him capture the cadence of the language. "For me, it wasn’t so much that I wasn’t pronouncing the word correctly, but the melody of the lines was different," he said. "So it was just a matter of trying to get the tonality of speech down."

Like many viewers, Kim was worried that Jin could be perceived as a cliched stoic and inscrutable Asian man.

"That was actually one of my biggest questions when I started," Kim said. "The character wasn’t a sympathetic character by any means, so I was a little bit concerned that he might come off as one-dimensional or somewhat stereotypical — and sure enough, after the pilot, I did receive some criticism for exactly that.

"There will always be a small minority of people who always want my character to be nothing but a hero who speaks fluent Korean and saves the day," Kim said. "I think there’s much more value in a character that’s complex and can really hold your interest for the long term."

Kim said he’s aware that his role comes with a somewhat heavy burden.

"This is really the first opportunity I’ve had to play someone who is a Korean national, so I want to be as sensitive as possible with regard to representing that," he said.

"It’s important that if I am in a position of visibility that I use that position to not only help myself and my career but [also to] continue to help the image of Asian portrayals in the media."

A recent study by the National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium found that Asians make up 5 percent of the U.S. population and play 2.7 percent of the regular roles on TV.

Before landing the role on "Lost," Kim played an FBI agent on "24," a social worker on "ER," and a really evil lawyer on "Angel."

"Most of the roles that I’ve done have been written for non-Asian people, so it has been a conscious choice to try to expand the notion of what’s acceptable for an Asian person to play," Kim said.

Kim grew up thinking he would become a doctor, like his father, or a lawyer. But once a friend at Haverford College asked him to be in a play, he was hooked. So he went to New York University and earned a master’s degree in acting. During his summer hiatus, Kim will return to his theater roots and New York to star in the off-Broadway production of the Chekhov play "Ivanov," where he looks forward to performing before a live audience.

Being in New York also puts him closer to his parents. They love watching their son on TV every week, but Kim’s mother has one small request.

"My mom can’t stand to see me get hit on the show," Kim said. "She asks me to tell her whenever I’m going to be involved in violence. When I got killed off on ’Angel,’ my mom literally couldn’t sleep that night."

Kim couldn’t offer many hints about what viewers can expect to see in Wednesday’s two-hour finale or answer any questions about the puzzling hints the series has been dropping all season.

"The party line happens to be the truth: I really don’t know," Kim said. "I have my own theories. That’s how bad it is.

"I like to parallel the character’s journey and the character doesn’t know and the character is trying to sort it out, so I like to walk along with him," Kim said. "One thing that I do believe is that all the characters are on the island for a reason. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that they just happen to be there and survive."

LOST

Two-hour season finale Wednesday at 8 on ABC