Sometimes a character is so impactful, they get to die twice
"I won't leave you."
Lost’s Jin-Soo Kwon was easy to dislike at first. His reluctance to make an effort with the other survivors, coupled with his hands-on approach to making sure his wife Sun stayed modest in dress and demeanor presented him as a stereotypical misogynist husband. So how did Jin become one of the most beloved characters on the show?
From shame-filled fisherman’s son…
Jin (played by Daniel Dae Kim) started life in a lower-class, single-parent household. His father, known only as Mr. Kwon (John Shin), had been involved with a sex worker (Alexis Rhee) who one day left him with an infant she claimed was his, abandoning them both. Though Mr. Kwon never knew for sure whether Jin was his son or not, he raised Jin as his own, never telling Jin the truth about his mother, saying instead that his mother had died.
As Jin got older, he became ashamed of his family’s low-class status and erased his past by telling everyone that his parents were dead. He moved to Seoul and worked in several hotels in the kitchen and as a waiter, until he was eventually hired as a doorman at The Seoul Gateway Hotel. Once there, he recognized how deep the class divide really was, as his job was literally policing which “class” of person could be allowed in the hotel. He decides to quit.
On the day he quits, however, he bumps into the woman who becomes the love of his life.
…to loving husband…
Sun (Yunjin Kim) was the daughter of a wealthy industrialist raised in privilege. However, when she meets Jin, there’s an instant connection. Despite the class divide, they fall in love, keeping their relationship a secret. Sun is prepared to elope, but Jin wants to do things “right.” He asks Sun’s father, Woo-Jung Paik (Byron Chung), for her hand. Mr. Paik gives his blessing on the condition that Jin work for him at Paik Heavy Industries for six months.
…to mob goon.
The second Jin is married to a wealthy industrialist’s daughter, his opportunistic mother comes out of the woodwork to blackmail Sun. She asks Sun for $100,000 in exchange for not revealing that Jin has a sex worker as a mother. Sun visits Jin’s father, confirming the story, and she gets the money from her father to pay off Jin’s mother, threatening to have her killed if she ever comes to them again. To allow Jin to continue to save face, Sun never mentions that she knows the truth of Jin’s past, saying instead that the money she got from her father was for furniture. Though Jin asked her to give it back, she gives it to Jin’s mother anyway.
Mr. Paik holds Jin accountable for repaying the debt and ropes Jin into doing more work for him—work that is progressively shady in nature. Whereas Jin was once responsible for things like buying gifts for the children of important officials on Mr. Paik’s behalf, increasingly violent tasks are demanded of him. Mr. Paik asks him to “deliver messages” to officials who don’t serve his interests, and though Jin refrains from killing for Mr. Paik, he sure as hell beats the ever-loving snot out of people.
This work, coupled with their infertility, takes a toll on Jin and Sun’s marriage. Sun ends up having an affair with Jae Lee (Tony Lee), a guy from her past, and contemplates running away to the U.S. to be with him, secretly learning English to do so.
Sun’s father learns of the affair (or rather, walks in on the affair actively happening). Without telling Jin why, Mr. Paik orders him to kill Jae because “he’s been stealing from him.” Again, Jin chooses to beat Jae up rather than kill him, but Jae is so ashamed that he jumps out of a window, killing himself.
Feeling like they’re past the point of reconciling, Sun is still determined to leave Jin. When Mr. Paik sends Jin on an errand to Sydney, and Sun goes with him, her plan is to leave him at the airport and get picked up in a car to go off to a new life. However, she changes her mind at the last minute, and they both end up on the fateful flight that crash lands on a mysterious island.
Shame and honor dictated much of Jin and Sun’s behavior toward each other, and their fellow survivors. Yet, as the situation on the island becomes increasingly permanent, things like “honor” matter less in the face of survival.
Once shame and honor are stripped away, Jin and Sun are able to return to themselves, and to each other. As they work through their past trauma and grief, they come to each other as more fully realized versions of themselves, becoming one of the strongest, most compelling couples on Lost.
Jin’s first death
In Lost‘s fourth season, a freighter called the Kahana arrives on the orders of Charles Widmore (Alan Dale), a wealthy industrialist who wants control of the island. Widmore has sent a team of military-trained mercenaries ordered to find Ben, kill any remaining survivors, and “torch the island.”
Several 815 survivors, including Jin and Sun, get onto the freighter. What they don’t know until it’s too late is that there are 500 pounds of military-grade C-4 explosives rigged to go off in the freighter’s armory. Martin Keamy (Kevin Durand), leader of the mercenaries, had a dead man’s trigger attached to his arm. If he dies, the trigger sets off the explosives, destroying the Kahana and killing everyone on board.
Desmond (Henry Ian Cusick), Michael (Harold Perrineau), and Jin discover the explosives and attempt to freeze them with liquid nitrogen, which buys them some time. Meanwhile, the amoral Keamy is doing whatever’s necessary to apprehend Ben, including murdering Ben’s adopted daughter, Alex (Tania Raymonde). Later, Ben seeks Keamy out to kill him out of vengeance. Though Keamy warns Ben about the dead man’s trigger and the C-4 on the freighter, Ben kills Keamy anyway.
Aaron, Hurley, Jack, Kate, Sayid and Sun (the Oceanic Six) manage to escape the freighter on a helicopter. As the helicopter ascends, Sun sees Jin running to catch up to them on the deck of the freighter, but they don’t turn the helicopter around. Sun screams in horror as she watches the Kahana explode, thinking Jin is dead.
Not dead yet
However, Jin survived the explosion, floating unconscious on a piece of wreckage that ended up traveling through time several times over the course of a few days. When he comes to, he’s found by a young Rousseau and her science team in 1988, and he is very confused.
Through the island’s many time flashes, Jin ends up being reunited with the group of survivors who remained on the island, including Sawyer (Josh Holloway). Meanwhile, thanks to the machinations of Locke (Terry O’Quinn) and Ben, the Oceanic Six are lured back to the island, supposedly to protect the people still there. The events of Lost season 5 involve more time travel, attempts at solving the mysteries of the island, and Jin searching for Sun as Jacob and The Man in Black duke it out over who gets to replace them as caretakers of the island.
Jin and Sun eventually have an emotional reunion on Hydra Island and vow to never be separated again. And they aren’t for the rest of their lives.
Jin’s actual death
As they are pursued by The Man in Black, the 815 survivors make their way onto a submarine. However, the MIB (in the guise of Locke) had slipped a bomb onto the sub to prevent them from leaving. After the bomb detonates, and the survivors scramble to escape the wrecked sub, Sun gets pinned by a metal pole. Jin gives Jack his last cylinder of oxygen to save Sawyer, saying that he’ll stay with Sun. Sun tearfully urges Jin to save himself, but Jin refuses to leave her. They die together, holding hands as the ocean water consumes them.
When Jin first arrives on the island, he’s a shame-ridden man who believes the only way to love Sun is by providing for her financially and maintaining his “honor” as dictated by their society. What he finally learns over six seasons of Lost is that Sun never needed any of that. His status never mattered to her. She loved him because he was kind and sweet, and all she ever truly wanted was his presence, which he could rarely give her once he made impressing her father a priority.
His final act in life is so poignant because he was finally giving her his complete presence at the most crucial moment in both their lives. Jin and Sun being together was the most important thing to both of them, and Jin honored that in a heartbreakingly beautiful way.
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