Jin-Soo Kwon

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Jin
Daniel Dae Kim as Jin
First appearance	"Pilot, Part 1"
Centric episodes	"...In Translation" "Exodus, Part 2" "...And Found" "The Glass Ballerina" "D.O.C."
Information
Name	Jin-Soo Kwon
Status	At the survivors' camp
Profession	Businessman/enforcer for Mr. Paik, formerly bellhop and waiter
Portrayed by	Daniel Dae Kim

Jin-Soo Kwon (Korean name Hangul: 권진수, RR: Gwon Jin-su, M-R: Kwŏn Chin-su), better known as "Jin," is a fictional character on the ABC television series Lost played by Daniel Dae Kim.

[edit] Fictional character biography

[edit] Prior to the crash

Jin-Soo Kwon is a South Korean man under the employ of his wife Sun's father, the wealthy industrialist Mr. Paik. He was born into relatively poor circumstances and, as a child, worked with his father on a fishing boat in a rural village in Namhae. Jin's dream was to have his own restaurant and then a hotel. One of his first jobs in the city is at the luxurious Seoul Gateway Hotel managed by an intolerant man named Mr. Kim, who deduces Jin's meager origins, and in hiring Jin as a doorman, instructs him not to allow "people like him" into the hotel. Jin works in this position briefly, quitting after Mr. Kim rebukes him for allowing a slightly disheveled man into the hotel so the man's young son could use the hotel lobby's bathroom. Leaving the hotel after his resignation, Jin runs into a beautiful woman, Sun, who eventually becomes his wife. Upon coming to work for Mr. Paik, Jin denounces and leaves behind his poor background so as to curry favor with Mr. Paik and obtain Sun's hand in marriage.

Jin's strained relationship with Sun stems from his employment to her unscrupulous father, who is not above using bribery, blackmail, extortion and possibly even murder to succeed. When Jin comes home one night with blood on his hands, Sun grows afraid of him and the kind of work she fears he is doing for her father. Jin has been assigned to intimidate a government official into overlooking environmental regulation violated by one of Paik's factories; rather than allow one of Paik's cruelly efficient hit men to simply kill the official, Jin violently beats the man in order to save his life. Jin, however, is unable to bring himself to tell Sun about her father's shady dealings and disillusion her about the source of her wealth and replies, "I do what your father tells me."

Despite the growing problems in their relationship, Jin and Sun still want to have children together. However, Sun is unable to become pregnant, which frustrates Jin because he hopes giving Sun's father a grandchild will please him to the point of giving Jin a safer and more legitimate job. When Jin finds out from a doctor that Sun will never be able to become pregnant, he grows angry and yells at Sun, believing that she knew about her condition all along and hid it from him. Though later, the doctor tells Sun he made this up, and it is really Jin who could not, but he did not say as Mr. Paik would not be happy.

Mr. Paik assigns Jin another mission in which he has to kill Jae Lee, the son of one of Mr. Paik's business associates. Although Jin is not told why he must kill Jae, it is because Mr. Paik discovered that he and Sun were having an affair. Jin refuses the mission, but Mr. Paik flatters him by calling him his son. A torn Jin ultimately decides to go through with it so he can continue to be married to Sun. Jin ambushes Jae outside of his hotel room, violently beating him. Once again, however, Jin finds himself unable to kill. He instead tells Jae to leave the country and never return. As Jin gets back into his car, Jae's body crashes into the car from above - an apparent suicide.

Jin is soon assigned a secret mission to deliver watches to Mr. Paik's associates in Sydney and then Los Angeles; Sun assumes that it was a vacation. Before leaving South Korea for Sydney, Jin visits his estranged father who is on the job and grateful for his son's return. Jin assists him and tells his father about the turmoil that has plagued his life since being employed by Mr. Paik. Jin's father advises that he and Sun should stay in the United States once they get there and never return to Korea. This becomes Jin's initial plan until he is confronted by an American associate of Mr. Paik in an airport washroom before boarding the doomed flight. The spy informs Jin that his plan to flee with Sun has been found out and he threatens to take Sun away from him should they run away.

[edit] After the crash

Jin's inability to communicate sets him apart from the other castaways and he usually stays away from the others, who initially think of him as violent and abusive to his wife. Despite this, he provides a useful function on the island as a fisherman, providing a substantial food source. Jin and Michael share an adversarial relationship for most of the first season, which twice explodes into physical violence. Their initial enmity begins in "House of the Rising Sun" when Jin attacks Michael to retrieve his father-in-law's watch, which Michael has found. Michael is the first to learn that Sun speaks English, which she had learned when preparing to leave Jin, though she eventually changed her mind. This discovery occurs because Sun wanted to explain to Michael why Jin attacked him. Michael seems to form a mutual understanding with Jin by the end of that episode, but their tension later erupts in "...In Translation", in which Michael attacks Jin for the alleged destruction of the raft he is building, not knowing that the raft was actually burned by Michael's son Walt, who does not want to leave the island. Having eventually set aside their issues, Jin aids Michael in constructing a new raft. The two set off on the raft together, along with Walt and fellow castaway Sawyer, and although their attempt to find shipping lanes fails, Michael and Jin have become good friends, with Jin looking after both him and Sawyer.

Jin has a single handcuff on his left wrist for the first season; this dates from his assault on Michael, after which Jin is handcuffed to some wreckage using handcuffs previously owned by the U.S. Marshal (and presumably worn by Kate Austen during the flight and discarded by her in the jungle after the crash, where Walt Lloyd finds them). Michael frees Jin by cutting the chain with an axe, but with the key lost, Jin still wore the handcuff until the second season.

The public revelation in "...In Translation" that Sun speaks English only further widens the gap between Jin and Sun, and they separate. The separation seems serious when Jin becomes part of the raft party that intends to leave the island, but before Jin leaves on the raft, he and Sun reconcile. She gives him a notebook that she has written, containing phonetic spellings, in Korean, of common English nautical words and phrases. For example, the first word that Jin comes across in the notebook is 'Starboard'.

When Sawyer is shot by the men who kidnapped Walt and falls into the water, Jin jumps into the ocean to rescue him. He ends up washing ashore and is captured by the tail-end survivors, or "Tailies", until he escapes, only to find Michael and Sawyer, who have drifted back to the island on the raft’s remnants. The Tailies, who themselves have been attacked by the Others, hold Jin, Sawyer and Michael in a makeshift prison, thinking them to be members of the Others, until Michael convinces them that they are also the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815. In one episode, Jin is shown speaking perfect English in Hurley's dream sequence.

While searching for Michael in the jungle, Jin gets a close up view of the mysterious "Others" - but only their feet.

Jin is reunited with Sun and the other fuselage survivors when the tail-section survivors join that camp. Using a bolt-cutter found in the hatch, Locke is able to remove the remaining handcuff from Jin's wrist.

In "The Hunting Party", Hurley tells Sun and Jin that Michael "went all commando" to go look for Walt again. Jin hears the word "Walt" and suddenly begins packing to go find Michael. Sun asks why he is packing, and he tells her that Michael is his friend, but Sun reminds him that she is his wife. Sun tells Jin that she did not like being told what to do for the past four years of their marriage and was very worried when Jin was on the raft, and Jin decides to stay with her instead of risking danger.

Sun is assaulted by an unseen assailant in "The Long Con", which causes Jin to become very protective of her. (The culprit is eventually revealed to be Charlie, who colluded with Sawyer to provoke paranoia in the other castaways so that Sawyer could gain access to the hatch's weaponry, though Charlie's role in this is not known to anyone outside of Sawyer.) Sun chafes against Jin's protectiveness, which causes a huge fight between them, and Jin ends up tearing apart Sun's garden. He later feels guilty for what he did, and tells Sun that he is sorry and that he needs her because he does not understand what anyone is saying on the island. Sun reveals to Jin that she is pregnant, and that their doctor told her in private that Jin is actually the one who is sterile (he was afraid to tell this to Jin in person because he was an enforcer for Sun's father). Sun then promises Jin that she was never with another man, confirming that the baby is in fact Jin's. Jin believes that the pregnancy is a miracle.

Sayid recruits Jin to steer Desmond's sailboat in "Live Together, Die Alone", but tells him (through Sun) they are using it to help Michael, not revealing that Jin's friend Michael is a traitor. Jin refuses to leave Sun behind, but Sun decides she will go with him and Sayid on the boat. Jin and Sun remained on the boat when Sayid went into the Others' camp, and all three are on the boat as the white light caused by the activation of the fail-safe mechanism in the hatch engulfs the island.

In "The Glass Ballerina", Jin grows impatient and wary waiting for Jack and wants to head back to camp, but Sayid and Sun oppose this. He feels betrayed by his wife, and his wariness turns out to be right: Sayid has no intention of waiting for Jack - he just wants to ambush the Others. Sun was asked by Sayid to lie to Jin about their reasons for staying, but Jin discovers this on his own since his knowledge of English is improving and because he spotted fresh tracks on the beach. He again feels betrayed. That night, Jin and Sayid wait in a tree for the Others, but the ambush plan fails, as the Others board the boat where Sun was hiding out. They hijack the boat and sail off, but Sun is able to escape into the water and reunite with Jin and Sayid.

Since returning from their journey, Jin and Sun's relationship seems to be back on track. In "Tricia Tanaka Is Dead", Sun begins speaking to him in English, which almost upsets him. However, when Hurley asks for volunteers to help with the newly discovered van he found in the jungle, Jin is the only one remaining after everyone else declines and walks away. Hurley takes Jin to the van and the two discover some DHARMA beer and also blueprints on a road project. Sawyer shortly arrives, to which Jin and Hurley are overjoyed. The three of them overturn the van. When Hurley goes to retrieve Charlie, Sawyer teaches Jin some English. When Hurley and Charlie return, Jin and Sawyer push the van down the hill, with the other two inside. After Hurley gets the van working, Jin joins them for a short joy-riding session before returning to camp with renewed hope and presenting Sun with a flower as a sign of affection.

In "Par Avion", Claire enlists Jin and Sun to help her capture a bird, and uses Jin's fishing net to set up a trap to try and catch it. However, their attempts of catching a bird are thwarted by gunfire, scaring the birds away. Jin spots Desmond running away, and he, along with Claire, argue with him. Later, in "Exposé", Jin, Sawyer and Hurley venture into the jungle and discover the motionless body of Paulo. Jin finds his bottle of water, but Sawyer empties its contents, much to the resentment of Hurley. He is present at their funeral, unaware that both Paulo and Nikki are not dead, but severely paralyzed.

[edit] Trivia

• Two of his flashback episodes' titles are actually pun on the Lost term. ...In Translation and ...And Found.

• Korean given names are almost always two syllables and never separated. It is unusual that the two Korean characters on the show do not use their full names. (The actress Yunjin Kim would never go by the name Yun, for example.)

• Jin is notable in that he is the only major character who was purportedly unable to speak English before arriving on the island (he does, however, speak English in one of Hurley's dream sequences). By contrast, Korean-born actor Daniel Dae Kim was raised in Pennsylvania, and thus in reality speaks American English fluently and Korean with an American accent. He is coached on set by a dialect coach and co-star Yunjin Kim to speak Korean without the American accent.

• Despite Jin's inability to speak English, six years of training in the English language is a compulsory subject in Korean schools. However, the Korean school system's goal in teaching students English is to have them read college textbooks in English. As a result, there is little to no focus on speaking English in Korean public schools. He is able to figure out that Sun and Sayid are lying to him in "The Glass Ballerina" however, and tells them he can understand English better than they think.

• Military service for a minimum of twenty-six months is compulsory in South Korea.^[1] This, in addition to Jin's mob experience, may explain his familiarity with handguns as seen in "The Glass Ballerina".

• The role of Jin was created to be Sun's husband. The reason for this is because Yunjin Kim originally tried out for the role of Kate, but the producers wrote the role of Sun specifically for her.

• Despite his mob experience, Jin is one of the only main characters who has not yet been shown to be responsible for the death of another person.

• During one flashback in the episode "... In Translation", Jin enters the home of a man to deliver a message for Suns father. The man's daughter is watching television. On the screen is Hurley climbing into a car.

1. ^ https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ks.html

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