Kerrand checking into the guesthouse is the start of their tense, uncomfortable, borderline romantic/sexual acquaintanceship.

Through all this, the narrator cannot pull herself away from this strange man and becomes obsessed with the drawings he makes when he thinks nobody is watching.

When the narrator takes the meal to his room, she leafs through Kerrand's sketchbook, and finds a woman with a scar on her leg just like her.

[3] She continually defies societal expectations, particularly regarding marriage and self image, by breaking up with her long-distance boyfriend and resisting her mother's urges of plastic surgery.

[5] It is also revealed that she has a complicated non-relationship with her French father, which proves to be problematic when she develops a crush on a Frenchman who is staying at the guesthouse where she works.

[6] It is well known in the area that the narrator was conceived as a result of an affair between her mother and a Frenchman who abandoned them, which causes tension on both characters involved.

[7][3] Their relationship becomes increasingly dull as the narrator realizes the extent of his vanity, for example, when Jun-Oh proclaims that he would be willing to get plastic surgery if it meant he would be hired as a model.

He puts pressure on the narrator regarding her duties at the guest house and is notoriously grumpy[5] Reoccurring themes in Winter in Sokcho include self image, identity crisis, and vulnerability.

The narrator's perception of her body is an inner struggle throughout the book; she frequently mentions that she goes periods of up to days without eating and then gorges herself when she is around her mother.

[7] The two characters have flirtatious interactions, but nothing manifests out of them largely because of a combined fear of vulnerability.