Jeongyeon

TWICE's lead vocalist, remembered for the pixie cut and the girl-crush energy. Offstage, she's the group's resident mom and chief nagger.

Born in Suwon in 1996 as Yu Jeong-yeon (her childhood name was Yu Kyung-wan; all three sisters later switched to names ending in "yeon"). She flunked her first audition, came back, and got into JYP Entertainment through its 2010 open call. Plot twist: SM Entertainment said yes on the very same day. She picked JYP without much agonizing, and she's often named Rain as the star who made her want to sing. As a shy new trainee, she'd hide in the piano room the second practice ended.

The road to debut broke once, hard. In 2014 she was set to debut with Nayeon and Jihyo in a girl group called 6MIX, but between the Sewol ferry disaster and lineup changes, the whole plan collapsed. She stopped going to the company and worked at a bakery for months, and liked it so much she thought about training as a baker for real. Then JYP called: come do the survival show SIXTEEN. That's how she ended up debuting in TWICE in 2015. On the show, Park Jin-young singled out how relaxed her voice was, no strain in the throat at all.

She can really sing. Her voice is big enough to cut through even a muddy live mix. The catch is that title-track choruses usually go to Nayeon and Jihyo, so "give Jeongyeon more lines" is a permanent fan demand. There's receipts, though: the day TWICE won their first music show with CHEER UP, Jihyo broke down in tears and Jeongyeon picked up her part on the spot. For a stretch she was the only member with short hair, and the fandom is still split into short-hair and long-hair camps. Her powerful dance lines also make her fancams a reliable hit.

The nickname list is long. "Yu-tto-geom" because she always wears black. "Ostrich" for the way she ran at the SIXTEEN variety camp. "Thanos's girlfriend" after she tried to join an Avengers chat without having seen Infinity War and declared Thanos the hottest one. At the dorm she's the cleaning captain: she taped "Recycle properly!" to the wall, and members say she vacuums extra hard when stressed. Roommate Momo calls her motherly, while Nayeon insists she's the mom and Jeongyeon's the dad. With Chaeyoung she formed the self-declared "boring brothers," with Jeongyeon as big bro. She's the top teaser in the group, but also the one nudging quiet Mina toward the camera and leaving a Choco Pie by Dahyun's pillow because Dahyun said she wanted one. Classic tsundere.

The family lore is a whole genre. Her older sister is actress Gong Seung-yeon, who uses a stage surname, so lots of people assumed Jeongyeon was a "Gong" too. She once signed an album to her sister like she was writing to a stranger and got a "Are we strangers?" in return, then threw the exact line back on Instagram a year later. Fans still quote it. The two even co-hosted Inkigayo together. Dad is a Korean-cuisine chef who's appeared on a cooking show, and mom runs a Japanese restaurant. Through her sister she's close with Red Velvet's Seulgi, and there's footage of the two doing the ostrich dance backstage. On the flip side, after CHEER UP promos she got kicked by a horse while filming a jungle survival show and hurt her leg, so among ONCEs that show is basically a banned word.

She's a devoted pet parent with several dogs and a cat, and she's kept volunteering at and donating to a rescue shelter, including two tons of food in 2025. In 2024 she started hosting the web show Gambyeolsa and grew its channel past 100k subscribers. Health issues cut her stage parts sharply in 2021, and in 2026 she opened up on You Quiz on the Block about living with Cushing's syndrome.

2025 flipped the script. She sang TAKEDOWN for Netflix's KPop Demon Hunters with Jihyo and Chaeyoung, and the track hit No. 50 on the Billboard Hot 100 and stayed 19 weeks, a first for any TWICE member outside the group and for any JYP solo credit. That summer she sang it live at Lollapalooza Chicago. In 2026 she landed a lead role as a nurse officer in the film spinoff of the military comedy Rookie, her acting debut. Then in August 2026 she chose not to renew her individual deal with JYP and moved her solo work to Baro Entertainment, her sister's agency. She's the first member to leave the label, but TWICE activities stay with JYP.