The Korean Independent School of Seoul from XO, Kitty might be fictional — if you're asking "is KISS real?" unfortunately the answer is no — but it was practically real for the stars of the show. The cast had their own boarding school–like experience staying in a hotel together while filming the To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before spin-off in South Korea. 

“We would go out on the weekends, and after work we would go and get late-night fried chicken, and go to karaoke and those fun things,” XO, Kitty star Anna Cathcart tells Tudum. “You do become a tight-knit group because you lean on each other and you all understand what you’re going through, and [you have] people to share the excitement and the overwhelmingness of everything and people who just really get it. Those were some of the most amazing months of my life.”

Cathcart, who reprises her role as Portland, Oregon, high schooler (and expert matchmaker) Kitty Song Covey in the rom-com, originally hails from Canada. But she and her fellow North American castmates made the Seoul area their home with the help of Korean co-stars. 

“Filming in Korea itself was a dream come true,” says Gia Kim, who plays Yuri, one of Kitty’s new classmates. Kim, who lives in Los Angeles, grew up in South Korea and was thus able to see family and friends during the shoot. “I hadn’t gone to many of the places that we shot at, so I got to really explore my own country in a way that I hadn’t before. It was amazing. I was also rediscovering my own country through this show.”

Sang Heon Lee, who plays Kitty’s privileged new classmate Min Ho (and is also Kim’s real-life brother), adds, “It felt like home. I didn’t feel so lonely off set or on set. I felt comfortable.”

And occasionally, Lee could hardly believe that he was part of a production that would literally stop traffic in the South Korean capital. “I was like, ‘They’re blocking off this road? That’s crazy.’ It was a very unreal moment. A very fan moment, really.”

Want to have your own fan moment? Find out where, exactly, Cathcart and her co-stars visited in South Korea as XO, Kitty filmed in the Seoul area.

Korean Independent School of Seoul (KISS)

Kitty’s long-distance boyfriend, Dae (Minyeong Choi), attends the Korean Independent School of Seoul, but that’s not her only connection to the educational institution. It turns out that Kitty’s mom also studied there during her junior year as the recipient of a scholarship that invited Koreans abroad to learn more about their culture.

The KISS campus is played on screen by multiple locations — many exteriors were filmed at Kaywon Art School, while interiors were shot at other locations throughout the Seoul area. The end-of-term talent show was filmed at the Independence Hall of Korea in Cheonan.

KISS Library

The KISS library is such a special location that it gets its own highlight. In real life, it’s the National Library of Korea in Sejong, which is two hours away from where the cast stayed. “The library was so sick,” Anthony Keyvan, who plays KISS student Q, tells Tudum. “I didn’t know a book place could look like this. It was so cool.” 

Incheon International Airport

When Kitty lands at Incheon International Airport outside Seoul, she just misses her shuttle to KISS. But those airport scenes, complete with fellow travelers and signs in Korean and English, look real for a reason — they were captured on location at ICN. The finale airport scenes, though no less bustling, were filmed inside the Korea International Exhibition Center, or KINTEX.

Park Young-Sol/Netflix

Han Hotel

Yuri’s hotel magnate father owns Han Hotel, where the family also resides. The State Tower Namsan (스테이트 타워 남산) stands in for the exterior of the hotel, while some interiors were filmed at the Grand Hyatt Seoul (그랜드 하얏트 서울) and others in the ballroom of the Pacific Hotel (퍼시픽 호텔).

KISS welcome party

Kitty and her classmates visit one of Seoul’s most famous landmarks in the first episode as the students’ welcome party is shot at the Dongdaemun Design Plaza (동대문디자인플라자). A hub of the Dongdaemun neighborhood, the DDP contains parks, exhibition halls, retail stores and even a design museum — and is also the site of Kitty’s dramatic exit from the party in Episode 2.

Seoul boutique

We first meet Yuri as she does some retail therapy at a trendy boutique in Myeongdong, one of Seoul’s most famous (and tourist-filled) shopping areas.

Park Young-Sol/Netflix

Seoul hike

The students of KISS take advantage of Seoul’s scenic surroundings thanks to Outdoors Club president Q. In the fourth episode, they go hiking to this monument, which was originally a military command post established in the late 1700s.

Seoul Central Market

When Kitty accidentally talks herself into cooking a Chuseok “Friendsgiving” feast for the KISS ex-pats, she runs into Min Ho (Lee) while grocery shopping. Luckily, her frenemy helps her buy the ingredients to make a true Korean dinner… and then makes it himself. In real life, the show’s Seoul Central Market is a branch of Korean grocery chain Hanaro Mart.

Rubik

Min Ho rents out a venue so he and his classmates can have another massive party, but this one is not exactly school-sanctioned (read: there’s alcohol, and it is most definitely past curfew). It was filmed at a club called Rubik in the massive resort complex Paradise City (파라다이스시티), and in the show, appears to be a debaucherous nightclub filled with loud music and plenty of partying. In reality, however, it’s a slightly tamer setting: a jazz lounge bar.

Camping trip

The scenes for the class camping field trip were filmed on Yeongheung Island. While the students stayed at a campground — Black Tree Camping (블랙트리캠핑) — in real life, the actors lodged at a Mykonos-themed hotel. “It was just like, ‘Where are we right now? This is insane,’ ” Keyvan tells Tudum. And the community garden where Madison (Jocelyn Shelfo) finally meets K-pop star Ocean Park was, coincidentally, right next to the ocean. “The view from there was so beautiful,” he says. Dae and Kitty have their own seaside romantic moment at another park on the island.

River walk

A pivotal scene between Principal Lim (Yunjin Kim) and Mr. Alex Finnerty (Peter Thurnwald) takes place on the river walk in this public island park on the Han River. Located under the Han River Bridge, Nodeul Island has both wooded areas and plazas that include restaurants, galleries and event spaces.

Additional reporting by Ariana Romero.

‘XO, Kitty’ Main Trailer