Angelina Jolie beams alongside son Maddox, 21, at White House state dinner

Angelina Jolie and her son Maddox were among the high-profile names attending the White House state dinner in the nation’s capital on Wednesday.

This year, President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden hosted South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol and his wife Kim Keon-hee in honor of the 70th anniversary of the US-ROK alliance.

Angelina, 47, and her eldest child, 21, were dressed to the nines for the lavish fling and had the pleasure of watching Yoon air Don McLean’s 1971 hit American Pie.

Maddox – adopted by the actress from Cambodia in 2002 – knows South Korea well after studying biochemistry at Yonsei University in Seoul.

Angelina flew to South Korea with her son in August 2019 as he prepared to take courses in September.

They visited the school for the first time at the end of 2018 and Maddox was finally accepted.

Although he was “admitted to other universities,” Maddox ultimately decided that Yonsei was right for him, as reported by PEOPLE at the time.

In addition to biochemistry courses, the outlet claimed that Maddox also “studied the Korean language.”

But Maddox’s studies abroad were interrupted due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced him to trade in-person classes for online school.

As a result, he returned to his childhood home in Los Angeles in March 2020, according to Angelina, who in an interview with Additional that year.

Since his classes stayed on Korean time, the Changeling star revealed that Maddox had no choice but to become a night owl.

“He had to stay away from Korea. He goes online so I think he starts at 6pm at night,” she told the outlet.

The sun reported in 2021 that face-to-face learning – specifically “labs, studio and field study courses” – would return in April 2021.