So before I started watching Lost (and really, to watch Lost is to be addicted to Lost) I used to wonder why the couple on the show was Korean (as in from Korea) rather than Korean American. You see, although I didn't follow the show, Lost was on my radar screen because, well, if you are alive and well and follow pop culture at all, it'd be hard not to miss the show and the fact that it has a somewhat multicultural/multiethnic/multiracial cast. And since I study race and pop culture (esp. regarding Asian Americans) I was aware that there were Asian characters on Lost, and it bothered me that there was yet another show featuring Asians rather than Asian Americans.
[Note: for those of you perhaps not sure of the difference, someone who is Asian is from an Asian country and speaks an Asian language and identifies with that Asian nation. Someone Asian American is someone who was either born here or who came over at a fairly young age (like both Daniel Day Kim and Yunjin Kim, the actors on Lost) who may or may not speak a language from their ethnic ancestry but they are also fluent in English and identify as Americans and with American culture--hence the Asian AMERICAN]
Of course, now that I've become an avid fan of the show, and especially since I was able to catch up on the first four seasons all in one fell swoop (Thank you SciFi channel & ABC streaming), I was able to see what the creators of the show were trying to accomplish by having these characters be Asian rather than Asian American. First of all, the language is important--the fact that they, seemingly, can't speak English. And of course it's a great twist for Sun to be revealed as fluent and then, eventually, for Jin to also reveal that he understands a lot more than people give him credit for. It's also great to see both characters develop beyond stereotypes. When they are first introduced, they just seem like this stereotypical Korean or East Asian couple--domineering and overbearing (and slightly menacing/violent) Asian man and his passive, largely silent, and cowed Asian wife. But as the show developed, the characters became fleshed out and broke out of these stereotypes, or at least evolved beyond them. Truth be told, I don't know that they essentially "broke" the stereotype, because I think that stereotype still exists, and certainly Sun's father is in keeping with that mold. But I do think that they have been fleshed out into people who aren't simply the sum of their ethnicities, and in very interesting ways.
I especially appreciate what the show is trying to do with language--with the fact that other characters do not understand them and that there are subtitles and that viewers get to hear Korean and see Korean people in the flashback sections--and that is a nice change of pace from normal mainstream network television.
I do wish that there were more Korean AMERICAN and Asian American characters on network TV--and I should in a future post talk more about that, and the character of Miles, so I'll put a pin in it for now. The subject of getting beyond stereotypes and Asian American representation in American society has actually been touched on in interviews with the two stars. Interview with YunJin Kim
Interview with Daniel Dae Kim
So now I don't really wonder about why they are Korean and not Korean American. For the show to work, they have to be from an Asian nation--they have to have a second language to converse in, one that others on the island don't understand (although that one woman, whose name now escapes me, was fluent in Korean, and Jin called her out in that one episode, which was cool). I do wonder, however, why Korea? Why not Japan or China--either country would still be feasible from a geographic pov to take a plane to Los Angeles that would have a brief layover in Australia/Sydney. What is there about Korea or about Jin and Sun being KOREAN that the show feels is important--what does it give the show that being from Japan or China wouldn't? I don't really have any answers to this last question, although I'd love to hear any theories if you have them!
