Can This Love Be Translated? Ending Explained: Mu-hee Finds Her Words Under the Stars
Mu-hee's happy ending arrives after Do Ra-mi loses her hold and Ho-jin waits for words that belong to her.
Can This Love Be Translated? ends with Cha Mu-hee coming back to Joo Ho-jin at the observatory after choosing to confront her mother and her buried childhood trauma. She speaks to him first through borrowed languages, then in Korean, and tells him she missed him; Ho-jin answers with the “universal language” she offers, a kiss under the stars. The ending means Mu-hee is no longer letting Do Ra-mi, her family’s lies, or fear of abandonment speak for her. Ho-jin does not rescue her from the past. He gives her the space to leave, face it, and return as herself.
The short answer
Mu-hee and Ho-jin end up together. Their last scene is not a public confession, a travel-show fantasy, or a translation passed through someone else. It is Mu-hee choosing the observatory, bringing clovers for good weather, and saying the sentence Ho-jin has been waiting to hear in the language she can finally own.
Do Ra-mi disappears because Mu-hee identifies where that voice came from. Do Ra-mi looked like Mu-hee’s mother, and the words that haunted Mu-hee came from the birthday memory she had never fully escaped. Once Mu-hee sees the face, remembers the sentence, and decides to find her mother herself, Do Ra-mi no longer gets to stand between Mu-hee and the life she wants.
The finale also clears the softer side stories. Hiro accepts that Mu-hee loves Ho-jin and starts fighting for his own future. Shin Ji-sun and Kim Yong-u choose the UK together without rushing into marriage. The last image belongs to Mu-hee and Ho-jin, but the whole hour is about people refusing to let fear translate love into retreat.
What happens in the finale
At the start of Episode 12, Mu-hee and Hiro watch the first cut of Romantic Trip. The footage makes their journey look easy: pretty locations, wine, jokes, and Hiro telling Mu-hee that every moment was beautiful because she was there. The crew asks whether any of it needs changing because fake on-screen romance can still bruise real people. Mu-hee says she is fine with it, and Hiro accepts the answer.
Hiro’s last bit of “revenge” is almost too gentle to count. He says he will tell Ho-jin that Mu-hee never had any real interest in Hiro, only to learn that Mu-hee already told Ho-jin herself. She apologizes to Hiro for wanting him to like her and for treating him like a prince from a dream. Hiro wonders what might have happened if he had answered her honestly at the clock tower — if he had just said yes when she asked whether he liked her — then says the last part in Japanese, where she cannot follow. It fits them. Their almost-romance began with missed meanings, and it ends with a goodbye that does not need to punish anyone.
The family plot then breaks open. Mr. Kim and his friend visit Mu-hee’s uncle under the cover of antiques and a donation, but the questions are really about Mu-hee. Her uncle claims she was adopted because she was family, not because she was wanted. Later, he brings the same contempt to Ho-jin’s house while asking for money. Ho-jin pushes back when the uncle calls Mu-hee cunning. She adapted, he says, because she grew up in a house of lies.
That is the doorway into the birthday memory. Mu-hee remembers cake, her mother, the dead bird, and the belief that her father had died too. Her mother asks whether she wants to be alone, then tells her that no one will love her. When Mu-hee sees the old photo her uncle kept, the face finally connects. Do Ra-mi looked like her mother. The voice that mocked Mu-hee was not random cruelty. It was the old sentence wearing a famous face.
After Mu-hee collapses and wakes in the hospital three days later, Ho-jin brings the missing truth. Her parents did not die that day. A neighbor reported her fall, the police came, and both parents survived. Her father is healthy, living in another country, and has been known to her as the youngest uncle. Mu-hee’s father’s family hid the truth because she said she did not remember, and they lost contact with her mother. Mu-hee decides to find her mother so she can face the person behind the voice.
The romance pauses there, but it does not break. Mu-hee tells Ho-jin she will go, see her mother, come back, threaten him, force him into dating her again, and be happy with him. It is ridiculous in the exact way their relationship has always been ridiculous. Time passes. Ho-jin waits in the house she once liked. Romantic Trip reaches its final cut. Then Mu-hee comes to the observatory, asks for help translating her apology because she is late, and says she missed him in German, Japanese, and Korean. Ho-jin has no words left, so he kisses her.
Do Mu-hee and Ho-jin stay together?
Yes. Mu-hee and Ho-jin stay together, but the finale does not pretend the relationship becomes simple. Mu-hee still chooses to leave first because she needs to find her mother. The difference is that leaving no longer means disappearing before Ho-jin can hurt her. She tells him the plan herself. She makes the breakup temporary, theatrical, and almost funny because she already knows she intends to return.
Ho-jin’s answer matters because he does not chase her into the family wound and make himself the solution. He wants to go, and she calls that sweet, unnecessary, and ridiculous. So he waits. When she comes back, he lets her try German, then Japanese, then Korean, until she reaches the sentence underneath all the performance: she missed him. Their kiss under the stars is the relationship’s real agreement. They do not understand everything. They choose to keep learning.
Is Do Ra-mi real, and why does she disappear?
Do Ra-mi is not treated as a separate person with a separate life. She is the part of Mu-hee that formed around fear, shame, fame, and the childhood memory Mu-hee could not fully face. Earlier episodes made that clear through Do Ra-mi’s timing. She appeared when Mu-hee felt too exposed: around Ho-jin’s kindness, family questions, public scandal, and the possibility of being loved as Cha Mu-hee rather than as the character who made her famous.
Episode 12 gives Do Ra-mi a face. Mu-hee realizes her mother looked like Do Ra-mi. That does not mean the role caused the wound. It means the role gave Mu-hee’s buried fear a body she could see. The sentence that ruled her life, “No one in this world will love you,” came from her mother on the day of the poisoned birthday cake. Do Ra-mi kept repeating that sentence in new forms.
Do Ra-mi disappears after Mu-hee stops running from that source. She tells Do Ra-mi she will force her to go away one final time. Do Ra-mi answers, strangely and painfully, with “I love you.” That is not forgiveness. It is the last remnant of the mother-shaped voice trying to sound like love. Mu-hee wakes later with Do Ra-mi gone, sleeping without medication, and ready to find the real woman instead of arguing with the ghost of her words.
Did Mu-hee’s parents really die?
No. Mu-hee’s parents did not die in the childhood incident, even though she grew up believing that version. The finale confirms that her father and mother survived after a neighbor reported Mu-hee’s fall and the police entered the home. Her father later lived abroad, healthy, while Mu-hee knew him only as the youngest uncle.
That reveal is intentionally messy. It does not give Mu-hee a clean family reunion or a simple villain to defeat. Her father’s family hid the truth. Her father stayed away because, according to the uncle, he could not bear to see her after what happened. Her mother vanished from their lives. Mu-hee’s choice to find her mother is not about pretending the past can be repaired neatly. She needs to look at the person who put that sentence in her and decide what survives after she hears the truth in daylight.
What the ending means
Mu-hee’s ending is about owning the sentence before anyone else can twist it. For most of the season, other people speak around her: interviewers ask about Do Ra-mi, crews build romance out of footage, Hiro needs Ho-jin to translate desire, relatives turn her childhood into a useful lie, and Do Ra-mi says the cruel things Mu-hee is afraid might be true. At the observatory, Mu-hee still plays with translation, but the final words are hers.
That is why the clovers matter. In Canada, Mu-hee chased clovers because she wanted luck for the aurora and for a memory with Ho-jin. By the finale, she brings a bouquet of clovers to the stars. It is still superstitious. It is still a little childish. It is also honest. Mu-hee is allowed to want good weather, want the man she loves, and want the future without apologizing for how much she wants.
Ho-jin’s change is quieter. He began as the careful interpreter who decided which words should travel and which words should stay behind. With Mu-hee, he learns that protection can become control if it keeps someone from hearing the truth. By the last scene, he is not translating over her. He is standing there, silent enough to be reached. For a romance built on language, that silence is the point. Love does not mean perfect understanding. It means staying present while the other person finds the words.
What to watch next
This ending will suit viewers who want romantic dramas where confession is less important than the long work of being understood. If you liked the mix of travel-romance gloss, private wounds, and funny people trying badly to be brave, follow the site’s next-watch recommendations from here.