South Korea

Korea is the destination of a long-awaited family journey and a continuing link to the Covey sisters’ Korean heritage. Planned for the whole month of July as a graduation gift, the trip promises time with relatives, language classes, travel across the country, and a pastry-making class for Lara Jean; its timing also makes the sisters’ connection to Korea inseparable from the impending transition to college and Lara Jean’s summer apart from Peter.

A long-awaited family journey

Dan announces the trip as a surprise graduation present: he is sending his three daughters to Korea with their grandmother. The sisters have talked about going for years, and their mother had always wanted to take them. Rather than accompany them, Dan and Trina will leave on their honeymoon, while Dan’s work at the hospital prevents him from taking enough time away. The arrangement makes the journey a gift from one generation to the next, carrying forward a wish associated with the girls’ mother even though she is not there to make the trip with them.

The plan gives the month a particular shape. The sisters will stay with a great-aunt in Seoul, take Korean-language classes several times a week, and tour the country, including Jeju and Busan. Lara Jean will also attend a Korean pastry-making class taught in English. The itinerary joins family visits and language learning with sightseeing and a personally chosen skill: she has long wanted to learn to bake Korean cream cakes, and Margot imagines the sisters shopping for face masks, stationery, and other small pleasures along the way.

The sisters respond with excitement, but the trip also registers differently for each of them. Kitty dances in her seat at the news, while Margot immediately imagines the activities they can share. Lara Jean says she cannot wait and joins the discussion of logistics, yet keeps a smile in place while Trina watches her closely. The trip is genuinely welcome; the tension comes from what it will interrupt, not from a lack of attachment to Korea.

Culture in everyday life

Korea’s significance is present well before the travel plans. Margot urges Lara Jean to join the Asian association at college, reflecting on how studying in another country has left her feeling she missed out on an Asian-American group. She describes college as a time when students can discover their racial identity. In that conversation, cultural belonging is not simply inherited or settled: it is something the sisters can continue to seek and build in new settings.

The family also considers how Korean culture should be acknowledged in Trina and Dan’s wedding. Peter suggests a wedding custom he has seen in a movie, but Kitty points out that the tradition is Thai, not Korean. Margot objects that Trina should not incorporate Asian culture into the wedding just because the girls are Asian, while Lara Jean answers that Trina wants them to feel included and has considered honoring their mother. The exchange distinguishes between cultures rather than treating “Asian” as one interchangeable category, and it exposes a difference of opinion over who should decide what counts as meaningful inclusion. Margot’s response is also shaped by Trina’s having never known their mother; the sisters do not share a single view of how a new family member should participate in their cultural and family history.

Food makes that history tangible. When Kitty mentions that Trina does not like Korean food, Margot calls food the sisters’ biggest link to Korean culture and insists that marriage to Dan means accepting the whole family, with Korea as part of that package. Lara Jean counters that they will eat Korean food every day during the coming summer trip, locating cultural continuity in a shared experience they can look forward to rather than only in a disagreement at home. Her hope of learning to bake Korean cream cakes gives that continuity a personal and practical form: culture is something she can carry through a skill as well as through family meals, language, and travel.

Lara Jean’s imagination of belonging

Lara Jean’s thoughts about work and performance show how she negotiates Korean heritage within American settings. She imagines getting a job in Colonial Williamsburg, churning butter in period dress, but wonders whether Asian people are hired in the name of historical accuracy. Margot rejects the idea that Lara Jean should be shut out, invoking Phillipa Soo’s casting as Eliza Hamilton and promising to challenge the museum publicly if it refuses to hire her. Their exchange turns a playful job idea into a question about who is permitted to appear in a national version of the past.

A costume decision poses a related question in a different register. For a themed school day, Lara Jean and Peter first consider characters from Alexander Hamilton and Eliza Schuyler, then choose Tyler Durden and Marla Singer from Fight Club after Chris suggests the pairing. Lara Jean initially hesitates because Marla is not Asian and she has a policy of dressing as Asian characters. Peter’s mother finds him a red leather jacket, while Trina lends Lara Jean clothes from her own wardrobe; the costume takes shape through other people’s contributions and Lara Jean’s decision to make an exception. The moment does not erase her concern about representation. Instead, it places that concern within the ordinary negotiations of friendship, couplehood, and choosing how to present herself.

A summer divided between connection and departure

The journey’s timing makes its emotional meaning more complicated. When Lara Jean tells Peter, he is surprised to learn that she will be away for a month. The news lands in mid-June, with only two months of summer remaining before he stays behind and she goes to Chapel Hill. Lara Jean recognizes that, before Peter, she would have rejoiced at spending a month in Korea; now she does not want to go, though she also does. Her divided response is not a rejection of the trip or its cultural significance, but a measure of how much her relationship has changed the way she anticipates leaving home.

She proposes that they FaceTime every day, working around the thirteen-hour time difference by calling at night for her and in the morning for him. Peter reminds her that they had planned to spend the Fourth of July weekend at Bledell’s, where he would teach her to wakeboard on his father’s new boat. The Korea trip therefore displaces a concrete plan they had made together, not merely an abstract stretch of time. Its month-long duration also brings the next separation into view: Lara Jean expects to return close to the point when she leaves for college, after a summer that has already kept the couple apart.

At graduation, the family’s celebration and Lara Jean’s concern for Peter occupy the same day. After he is hurt, she wants more time beside him, but her family reaches her through the crowd; she apologizes, and he takes pictures with them before leaving to find his mother and brother. At lunch in a Japanese restaurant, she tries to be festive while thinking about how hurt Peter is. Over mochi ice cream, her grandmother describes the places she wants to visit with the sisters in Korea, from Buddhist temples and outdoor food markets to the skin clinic she visits. The trip appears as a vivid family itinerary, while Lara Jean’s attention remains divided between the coming journey and the boyfriend she will leave behind.

That division persists when the sisters’ summer plans become immediate. As Peter drives Lara Jean to join the others, Kitty spots the donuts he has brought and blurts out the Korea news before Lara Jean has told him. Lara Jean quickly explains that Dan is sending the sisters for graduation. Peter responds that the trip sounds cool, but when he learns it will last a month, he repeats the duration in dismay. Lara Jean reassures him that they can stay in touch, yet the exchange makes the cost of the gift plain: Korea is a long-desired destination and a connection to family, but accepting the journey means surrendering time the couple expected to spend together.