Two members of TWICE quit their record label in the same week, and the group didn’t lose a single member. If that sentence made you tilt your head like a confused golden retriever, congrats, you now understand exactly how I felt scrolling Twitter on August 13th. TWICE members leaving JYP Entertainment is real, it happened twice in four days, and it is somehow not a breakup story. It’s actually a much more interesting story about how K-pop contracts work, and I’ve got questions to answer because you definitely have them too.
Wait, Are TWICE Members Actually Leaving the Group?
No. That’s the headline everyone gets wrong on first read. On August 10, Jeongyeon announced she was leaving JYP Entertainment after 11 years, signing instead with Varo Entertainment (the agency that already reps her sister and actor Byun Woo-seok). Three days later, on August 13, Chaeyoung announced the same move after 14 years at JYP, going fully independent under her own creative banner, “Lil Fantasy.” Both women said, almost word for word, some version of “nothing changes with TWICE.” They left the company. They did not leave the group.
So What Did They Actually Sign Away From?
Here’s the part foreign fans usually don’t know: in K-pop, your “group contract” and your “agency contract” are technically the same piece of paper, bundled together, which is exactly why this is confusing. Jeongyeon and Chaeyoung didn’t sign a new deal with JYP for their personal management — acting gigs, solo music, endorsements, art projects — while their status as TWICE members is apparently being handled through a separate arrangement between JYP and their new agencies. It’s less “leaving TWICE” and more “hiring a new manager for everything that isn’t TWICE.”
Why Is This Even Legally Possible?
Short version: Korea’s Fair Trade Commission capped standard idol exclusivity contracts at seven years back in 2009, directly because of TVXQ’s members suing SM Entertainment over what got nicknamed a “slave contract” — 13 years, no real profit disclosure, zero say in their own schedules. That lawsuit rewired the entire industry’s legal defaults. TWICE debuted in 2015 and all nine members re-signed together in 2022, which tracks almost exactly with that seven-year mark. What we’re watching now, four years later, is what happens after the second contract cycle starts winding down and members with enough leverage negotiate custom terms instead of a flat renewal.
Okay, But Why Now, Specifically?
Leverage. Chaeyoung’s debut solo album, “Lil Fantasy Vol. 1,” landed at No. 86 on Rolling Stone’s 100 Best Albums of 2025 and hit No. 7 on both Billboard’s and Forbes’ year-end K-pop lists — released while she was still fully under JYP. That’s not a vanity side project, that’s proof her solo work sells and gets critical respect on its own, which is exactly the kind of track record that gets an artist enough negotiating power to ask for independent management. Jeongyeon, meanwhile, is pivoting toward acting, a lane JYP has historically been weaker in than dedicated acting agencies like Varo.
Has This Happened Before?
Sort of, but rarely this clean. Compare it to the NewJeans/ADOR mess of 2024–2025, which was a screaming legal battle over creative control that genuinely threatened the group’s existence. This is the opposite: no lawsuit, no public feud, both members publicly thanking JYP on their way out, and JYP not contesting it. It reads less like a crack in TWICE and more like the industry quietly normalizing a “one member, two lanes” model that used to be rare enough to make headlines every time.
What Does This Mean for TWICE’s Future?
With two of nine members already restructured, industry chatter has turned to whether Jihyo and Tzuyu, TWICE’s other members reportedly nearing their own renewal decisions, follow the same playbook. If they do, TWICE could end up as nine members functionally split across five or six different management companies while still touring, releasing albums, and promoting as one group — a genuinely unusual structure by Western standards, where a band typically shares one label or is independently signed as individuals from the start, not carved out mid-career member by member.
So no, TWICE isn’t breaking up, and no, this isn’t the drama-bomb the headlines made it sound like. It’s contract law catching up to how much money and clout individual idols now carry on their own, sourced straight from Korea Herald’s and Soompi’s reporting on both announcements. Once fans, don’t panic — just maybe start following two new agency Instagram accounts.
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Sources
- Korea Herald — “Twice’s Chaeyoung to continue solo career outside JYP, pledges commitment to group”
- Korea Herald — “Twice’s Jeongyeon leaves JYP after 11 years, joins Varo Entertainment”
- Soompi — “TWICE’s Jeongyeon Personally Confirms Departure From JYP + Signs With VARO Entertainment”
- Korea JoongAng Daily — “Twice’s Chaeyoung leaves JYP to start her own label”