When Yunjin Kim, who played Sun Kwon in Lost, first read the pilot script for the ambitious ABC sci-fi show, she was concerned that the depiction of her meek Korean housewife “was really backward.”
In 2004, it was still relatively rare to have Asian characters, much less non-English speakers, be part of the ensemble of a mainstream network television show. Kim was concerned that the show would waste this opportunity for representation by giving into stereotypes of a submissive Asian woman and her hostile husband. But co-creator and executive producer J.J. Abrams eased her worries by sharing some of his plans for Sun, who would be revealed to have secretly learned English. Those plans wouldn’t come to fruition until the sixth episode of Lost Season 1, “House of the Rising Sun,” a sneakily groundbreaking episode in more than a few ways.
