Lara Jean's grandmother

Lara Jean's grandmother turns the sisters’ long-standing wish to visit Korea into a concrete family journey, arranging a July stay in Seoul, Korean-language classes, and a tour of the country. Her role reaches beyond planning: at Lara Jean’s graduation she is part of the family gathered around the graduate, while her stories and suggestions make Korean food, travel, and everyday cultural knowledge part of the sisters’ shared future.

Family and Background

Lara Jean’s grandmother is identified through family gatherings and through the sisters’ anticipated connection with Korea. She is part of the support network around Lara Jean, Margot, and Kitty, and her plans for them answer a wish that had existed for years: their mother had always wanted to take them to Korea. The trip therefore carries an emotional inheritance as well as a destination. The grandmother helps the sisters approach a place linked to their mother’s memory through experiences they can share themselves.

Her presence is not interchangeable with that of Lara Jean’s mother. On graduation day, Lara Jean wishes her mother could give her a hug and has to hold to the belief that her mother somehow sees these milestones. The grandmother is physically present for the occasion, arriving with the family, but the comfort of one generation does not erase the absence of another. The scene places continuing grief beside the family’s active care for Lara Jean.

The Korea Trip

At the graduation celebration, Lara Jean’s father announces that he is sending the three girls to Korea with their grandmother as a graduation gift. The sisters have talked about making the trip for years, and the plan is already organized: they will leave the following month, spend all of July there, and stay with a great-aunt in Seoul. Their father and Trina will be away on their honeymoon, while he and the grandmother have arranged the sisters’ itinerary.

The trip is designed to mix family connection with structured exploration. The sisters will take Korean-language classes several times a week and tour the country, including Jeju and Busan. Lara Jean is also given a particular activity of her own: a Korean pastry-making class conducted in English. The arrangement makes the journey more than sightseeing; it offers language learning, movement through several places, and a practical way for Lara Jean to pursue her interest in baking.

The sisters respond with distinct but overlapping excitement. Kitty dances in her seat, while Margot imagines shopping for face masks, stationery, and other cute things with her sisters. She connects Lara Jean’s pastry class to Lara Jean’s longstanding wish to learn Korean cream cakes and imagines that they might return able to watch Korean dramas without subtitles. The grandmother’s plan gives each sister a different point of anticipation while making the trip a shared project.

A Graduation-Day Presence

The grandmother attends Lara Jean’s high-school graduation with the family. In the car on the way to the ceremony, Lara Jean notes that her father has gone separately to pick her up; her paternal grandmother, whom the narration distinguishes as Nana, is in Florida with her boyfriend and cannot attend. The distinction between the two grandmothers matters in the scene: Lara Jean’s maternal grandmother is among those present, but the milestone still contains an absence that no family gathering can repair.

After the ceremony, Lara Jean’s father, Trina, her grandmother, Kitty, Margot, and Lara Jean go to a Japanese restaurant for lunch. They order sashimi and sushi, and Lara Jean wears a napkin bib over her white dress to protect it from soy sauce. Trina sits beside the grandmother and chats with her. Lara Jean imagines that the grandmother may find Trina talkative, but she also reads her as appreciating Trina’s effort. The exchange shows a family relationship being worked on through ordinary company and conversation, rather than through a formal declaration of closeness.

At lunch, the grandmother turns the conversation toward Korea, naming Buddhist temples, outdoor food markets, and a skin clinic she visits to have her moles lasered. She notices a small mole on Kitty’s cheek and suggests that it could be taken care of there; Dan looks alarmed, and Trina asks whether Kitty is too young. The moment gives the grandmother’s travel talk a practical, personal texture, while the adults’ response marks a difference in judgment about what is appropriate for Kitty.

She also thinks about what each granddaughter might want. She suggests that Margot could buy new eyeglasses in Korea, where fashionable frames are inexpensive; Margot responds that she has always wanted red frames. Then the grandmother asks Lara Jean whether she is excited about the cooking class. Lara Jean answers brightly, but texts Peter under the table to ask if he is all right and invite him to come by. The juxtaposition keeps the family’s anticipated trip in view without making it the only feeling present at the graduation lunch: Lara Jean is excited, yet preoccupied with Peter’s hurt.

Cultural Inheritance and Choice

The grandmother’s plans sit within a family conversation about what Korean heritage means and who gets to define its expression. In discussing Trina’s wedding, Peter suggests an Asian tradition, and Kitty corrects him that the custom he has in mind is Thai rather than Korean. Margot objects that Trina should not incorporate Asian culture into her wedding simply because the sisters are Asian, especially when Trina is not; Lara Jean replies that Trina wants them to feel included and has considered acknowledging their mother. The disagreement makes cultural identity a matter of specific knowledge, personal connection, and family intention, not a generic set of interchangeable customs.

Margot later insists that Korean food is the sisters’ strongest link to Korean culture and worries that Trina’s dislike of it could mean they would stop eating it. Lara Jean answers that Trina knows she is marrying into the whole family, including its connection to Korea, and points out that the sisters will eat Korean food every day that summer. The grandmother’s journey gives that assurance a concrete setting: Korea is not simply an idea the family debates at home but a place the sisters are about to visit with someone who can guide them through it.

The grandmother’s significance lies in this combination of presence and provision. She attends a milestone shadowed by Lara Jean’s longing for her mother, and she helps transform a family wish into a month of travel, study, food, and shared plans. Through her, the sisters’ relationship to Korea is carried forward as lived experience—specific places, classes, meals, and choices—rather than as heritage reduced to a single custom or symbol.