Hong’s Cave

There was a buzz about a new ABC series, “Lost”, created by JJ Abrams (of “Alias”) on an A/V message board I frequent. It sounded good, so I had my TiVo record the series, and we’ve finally watched the second half of the 2-hour pilot last night.

The show being promising is not my concern for this article. :p

When we were watching the episode, we noticed an Asian girl and initially wondered what her nationality was (my wife said she was Korean, and I said either Japanese or Chinese although she kinda looked familiar). And then there was an Asian male character who I immediately recognized as Daniel Dae Kim. So, I already realized I lost the bet.

However, the surprise came when they started talking to each other. Their dialogs were in Korean (Daniel, who was born in Pusan, was faking a Pusan accent), and not only that there was no subtitles!

So, I started digging up the Internet, and it turns out the actress was Kim Yunjin (also spelled Yoon-Jin) who have appeared in several Korean movies (including “Swiri”). Her Korean was authentic, which was another first in the U.S. TV/movies.

The rumor is that Ms. Kim initially auditioned for the role of “Kate” (the main female character), but they didn’t think she was right for it. But they liked her enough that they created this role for her (and the role of her husband).

The series is into its first pilot episode, so it’s difficult to judge, but Korean dialog was okay, not perfect (I would have preferred omitting “당신을” from Sun’s lines and substituting “싫어요” with “안 돼요” or “어어…” for Jin’s lines). They are playing a typical role of a chauvinistic husband and a subservient wife, which I have a bit of a problem. But there is a rumor that the couple is actually hiding their English skills, so it may change.

The show looked beautiful in HD. The story may not turn out to be great, but I think it does have a potential. I’ll be keep watching it.

Anyway, I hope they don’t end up just speaking Korean till the end of the series. I hope they can get some other roles after this. It could be a good thing for Asian American actors, after all (just don’t play some typical ethnic roles).