Lost's Daniel Dae Kim Teases Season Six: 'Maybe Jin and Sun Won't Get Back Together'

Is that sort of interaction atypical? Do you have a lot of contact with the writers, or do you only see them every so often at events like TCA?

That's one of the big disadvantages of shooting so far away from the writers room: We don't get to have as much contact with them as most actors do with their showrunners. At the same time, it doesn't feel awkward once we do see them, because there's a level of trust there that goes back to season one.

Since season four, Lost has had a delayed premiere date. When you shoot so many episode of the season before any of them have even aired, are there pros and cons to that approach?

Yeah, of course. I think there's definitely a risk -- you kind of lose an awareness of the show's [perception], but conversely, it allows the writers and the people creating the show a certain freedom to do things without so much vocal feedback, because you know our show is characterized by some ardent fans. It's nice to be able to see through the writer's vision without outside influence.

I live in LA, and I have a friend in Koreatown who said that his neighborhood used to shut down when Lost was airing because people were so excited to see regular Korean characters on American TV. Do you ever get feedback like that?

Yeah, I do hear a lot of those kinds of stories. It makes me proud to be a part of the show because at that time, there weren't many casts like ours on television with a high level of international representation. Those kinds of stories are really heartwarming -- at the same time, though, you can't really invest too much in them. For every person who's saying that the show is the best thing since slices bread, there's someone saying something negative about it. Soon, there just gets to be a lot of noise, and it can get to be a little distracting from the work you need to do.

Was there a point when you stopped listening to that?

When we were going through season one, I did read a lot of the blogs. I would go on websites and fansites and read a lot about the theories about the show, things like that. By the end of season one, I thought, "You know what? This is doing as much harm as it is good. I get a sense now of what the show means to people, and what the general criticisms and compliments are, and I think that's enough. I'll move on from here."

I imagine you were reading some interesting feedback at that time, since Jin wasn't entirely sympathetic until later in season one.

Yeah, that's a good point. I had my share of people who came up to me when season two started airing who were like, "I hated you." And I was like, "Well, hello to you too!" I've been so lucky in that I knew from discussing with J.J. [Abrams] and Damon [Lindelof] that my character was going to make a turn, so I had trust in them that I could hold out and handle the criticism while that was going on. I knew something better was around the corner.

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