Jihyo of Twice’s K-Pop Career Has Been 15 Years in the Making

If Jihyo gets house after finishing another grueling day of becoming Jihyo — global pop superstar and primary vocalist of South Korea’s best-selling woman group, TWICE — she transforms into her coziest pajamas, ties up her hair, slides her wire-frame, blue-light-protection eyeglasses, also delves into the world of League of Legends. In the game, players combine an outfit of misfit “winners” who struggle to control a map.

But that is following this meeting. Jihyo nevertheless has 45 moments left now to become Jihyo, the chief of an outfit of stunning idols dancing and singing in hopes of beating the entire world. We are within a windowless picture studio on a calm, residential mountain in Seoul’s fastest-paced area, Gangnam. About us, the dividers of plastic surgeons’ offices and home-decor stores glow to the evening. In the procedure for un-becoming Jihyo, the idol is peeling her off habit crystallized Unistella stick-on nails one by one and trapping them like miniature pancakes. Only 15 minutes past, these claws coordinated with lilac, geode-like lids plus also a printed seafoam organza high-low blouse which Jihyo swirled in such as she had been filming the voucher for flamenco night on a Korean variant of Dancing With the Stars.

The minute she entered the public attention, Jihyo became the net’s focal point, her life always being picked aside: her term choices, weight, facial expressions, customs. She’s probably aware I am doing it to her right now. Soon she will maintain her happy place: in the home with League of Legends. Online gaming allows the 23-year old yield to anonymity, even if it’s just for a couple of moments weekly. “I am constantly tense and careful about how folks see me. But when I am playing on line games, I could truly feel the truest for myself,” she says through an interpreter, sinking into her seat and clasping her hands. “nobody can judge me through [the screen]. That’s why I feel most comfortable.”

She hasn’t been herself for years. TWICE debuted in October 2015, after an arduous five-month competition process brought together nine girls from South Korea, Japan, and Tainan for all to see on a reality show called Sixteen. Nayeon, Jeongyeon, Momo, Sana, Jihyo, Mina, Dahyun, Chaeyoung, and Tzuyu beat out seven other trainees to be in the group. All were from JYP Entertainment (JYP), one of Korea’s most prominent entertainment companies, and took part in intense practice days for performances judged by the JYP of JYP, Park Jin Young, the company’s founder (and an idol himself).

Trainees, for those unfamiliar, are adolescents signed to a company in hopes of one day being picked for a K-pop group or solo debut. While they wait to be chosen, they sharpen their pop-star skills every day after school. Jihyo, of all the Sixteen contestants (and most other women in K-pop), had been in the trainee system the longest.

TWICE’s songs, which lease a spot in your brain as soon as you hear them, instantly started breaking global records not only in Korea but also on YouTube. Just after its first anniversary, TWICE racked up best new artist awards and South Korean President Moon Jae In used their song “Cheer Up” as his presidential campaign jingle. In 2018, TWICE won song of the year — for the third year in a row — at the Mnet Asian Music Awards. (The group that ended that streak: BTS, who, even if you’ve never heard of K-pop, you surely have heard of.)

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I’m always tense and cautious about how people see me. But when I’m playing online games, nobody can judge me the screen.”

It is not an overstatement to say that the girls are everywhere: onstage, on their new YouTube Originals series covering backstage, alongside tens of thousands of fan-made videos, and right there on the window of Lotte Duty Free, a major department store outside of my hotel in Seoul. The next day, I went to the Sephoraesque Chicor, and there were the girls again, soft-smiling back at me behind the display for an Estée Lauder cushion compact. (They’re ambassadors for the brand in Korea.) This wasn’t one of those situations when you finally meet someone you’ve lived down the street from for six years and suddenly start seeing them everywhere. I might have been attuned to TWICE, but the members’ faces are unavoidable around South Korea’s capital.

No matter where you encounter them, Jihyo, as the leader, is always the nucleus of the group, with Nayeon, Jeongyeon, Sana, Momo, Mina, Tzuyu, Dahyun, and Chaeyoung by her side.

Born Park Ji Soo in Guri, a city half an hour’s drive from Seoul, Jihyo had never taken singing or dance lessons before she became a trainee at eight years old (she was scouted by JYP after placing in a child-actor competition). Instead, she spent her pre-fame years hiking up Achasan, a nearby mountain, with her fitness-focused parents.

Approximately 99 percent of what Jihyo tells me is emphatically in Korean. The remaining 1 percent is a bashfully whispered “sorry” after revealing she was genetically blessed with clear, luminous skin and didn’t experience breakouts grow- ing up. Maybe the purpling freckles under my foundation gave me away, but it’s like Jihyo knew I had been given about 300 shallow injections of vitamins, Botox, and hyaluronic acid in my face by a dermatologist in Gangnam four days earlier — an attempt to achieve a porelessness I didn’t inherit from my parents.

“Because I started [performing] at a very young age, I felt like this is the only thing I could do,” Jihyo says. This doesn’t come out as existentially loaded as it may seem.

If Jihyo is tired after a long day of shooting, I can’t tell. Her voice is consistently lined with the same animated, melodic bubbliness of a TWICE song. She sounds just as bouncy when she nonchalantly discloses that she’s been on a strict diet for of her life: “I almost starved myself.”

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Because I started so young, I felt like this was the only thing I could do.”

Jihyo notices my eyes widen at least two centimeters and quickly clarifies: “I didn’t really starve myself, [but] I had a hard time staying at a certain weight.” On Sixteen, the show that chronicled TWICE’s training process, Jihyo was repeatedly called out on her weight. These days, she doesn’t feel compelled to fit an unrealistic body image. “I’m happy making money to buy delicious food and eat it with my friends,” she says. “I don’t think I have to look skinny.”

When Jihyo was named leader of TWICE after an anonymous vote by the other members — a position that comes with about as much responsibility as being the president of a small country — she took on new duties. Eight of them. In K-pop, holding such a position doesn’t necessarily mean you’re given the most lines or constantly put at the center of choreography.

Instead, you act as the group’s spokesperson and chief decision-maker. Jihyo conducts votes on what meals the girls will have, parts of their choreography, and living arrangements. (They’ve roomed together for ages.) She gathers everyone’s opinions and gives JYP staff the majority vote. “Since we’ve been together for five years, it takes less time to gather one opinion,” Jihyo explains.

Her charges include Mina, the Texas-born, Japan-raised group member. Her voice lilts like a Disney princess’s, but she’s far in timid with her words. There’s Tzuyu, the youngest, who was added to the group by popular demand. There’s Jeongyeon, who would go onstage bare-faced if you gave her the chance. (I can watch my reflection on the apples of her cheeks.)

But back to Jihyo: What’s the best part of being the leader?

She stares off at the eggshell wall behind me and raises her eyebrows, breaking into a laugh: “I think this is the kind of question you’d have to ask the other members.”

It occurs to me, that’s exactly what also an excellent leader would say.

This cover story is a part of Allure’s “Beauty of K-Pop” project, where we explore how K-pop came into define more than just the international music scene.