EXCLUSIVE: Will Yun Lee and Mark and Christine Holder’s Seoul Street and 04 Entertainment have preemptively nabbed the rights to My Summer in Seoul, bestselling author Rachel Van Dyken’s forthcoming romance novel set in the competitive world of K-Pop, to adapt as a television series. A search is out for a female Asian American writer to pen the adaptation.

The project comes amid a recent rise in the popularity of Korean dramas worldwide that culminated in the success of Squid Game on Netflix, which has become a global phenomenon.

My Summer in Seoul, set to be released later this fall, follows Korean-American Grace Lee as she embarks on a life-changing trip to Seoul working for her uncle’s record label. Her life changes as she begins an internship with one of the biggest KPOP bands in the world. As she builds friendships with the members, and starts to fall for one guy in particular, she soon realizes that she’s living her own K-Drama come to life and while she wants happily ever after, she just might end up with a hard lesson learned.

In the series, described as Emily in Paris meets To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before, Lee follows her dreams all the way to Korea to work as an intern at one of the biggest record labels in the world. Brought up by her Korean dad and her gorgeous blonde hair blue eyed mom-this is the first time Grace Lee has been out the country and able to experience her heritage first hand. The minute she gets off the plane to start her three-month internship she feels like she’s finally come home, that is until she meets the other intern who’s going to be training her. Solia takes one look at Grace and worries she’s going to get fired, after all Grace wasn’t what anyone was expecting. Grace is wearing the wrong clothes, her hair looks like a bird nested in it then died from asphyxiation and she doesn’t speak any of the language. What’s even worse, is that Grace soon learns that the entire production company is in panic mode-meaning she gets to meet everyone right away-Nike sweats, messy bun, and all. She tries to think about the positive as she’s brought to a gorgeous apartment building but soon realizes she should have asked more questions about what her internship required of her. Jet lagged and starving, she meets up with her Uncle Siu-the CEO of the company-as well as five gorgeous men who all seem to be close to her age. She wonders why they look so familiar and within minutes has the answer. She’s standing in front of one of the worlds biggest K-pop groups SWT. And her new internship includes making sure none of them escape the apartment before their big showcase, along with guarding the door so the band lead doesn’t attempt suicide-again.

Lee, Mark Holder and Christine Holder produce for Seoul Street, along with Colet Abedi, Jasmine Abedi & Brian Zagorski for 04.

Seoul Street currently has Aloha MotherF**ker, a drama series based on Jason Ryan’s best-selling novel Hell-Bent, set at HBO Max. On the feature side, the company has Lions in the Garden in development with Kevin Hart’s HartBeat Productions.

04 Entertainment has scripted projects Nurturing, Healing Love and The Royals Next Door and feature Dying To Be Me all set at Lifetime. The production company also has also partnered with The Content Group on a scripted series with Wall Street Journal bestselling author Nana Malone and another based on K.A. Tucker’s One Tiny Lie, among other projects.