Jisoo

• 1. Introduction

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  Kim Ji-soo, known simply as Jisoo, is a South Korean singer, songwriter and actress whose name is stitched into a lip balm. Dior sells its Addict Lip Glow in ten shades. One of them, number 025, is called Seoul Scarlet, and the house says it was inspired by Korean women such as Jisoo. In March 2021, Dior's creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri also revealed that the label's Autumn/Winter 2021 collection drew on her. Few pop stars end up shaping both a cosmetics palette and a runway season. Jisoo rose to prominence as a member of Blackpink, which debuted under YG Entertainment in August 2016 and became one of the best-selling girl groups of all time. This documentary asks how a girl from the suburbs south of Seoul reached that point. It asks why luxury brands count the value of her Instagram posts in millions of dollars. And it asks what happened when she stepped out of a four-member group and began to sing alone.

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• 2. Gunpo and the Trainee Years

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  Gunpo, South Korea, is where Kim Ji-soo was born on the 3rd of January 1995. She grew up with an older brother and an older sister. As a child she played basketball and practiced taekwondo, and she dreamed of becoming a painter and a writer. She was also a fan of the boy group TVXQ.

  In high school she attended the School of Performing Arts Seoul. In 11th grade she joined a drama club there and began going to auditions to gain experience. Until her professional debut she lived at home with her parents, her siblings and her grandparents. Alongside her native Korean, she has learned to speak Chinese and Japanese.

  In 2011, Jisoo passed the auditions for YG Entertainment and joined the company as a trainee. Her first public appearances came as a face in other artists' videos. In October 2014 she played a heartbroken girl in Epik High's music video for "Spoiler + Happen Ending". The same year she appeared in Hi Suhyun's video for "I'm Different" as the girlfriend of Bobby.

  In 2015 she made a cameo in the KBS2 drama The Producers, alongside her labelmates Sandara Park of 2NE1 and Kang Seung-yoon of Winner. That small role arrived one year before the group that would define her public life stepped onto a stage.

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• 3. Four Members, One Group

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  On the 8th of August 2016, Jisoo debuted as one of four members of Blackpink, standing beside Jennie, Rosé and Lisa. The group's first release was a single album called Square One. It carried "Whistle", which topped the charts in South Korea, and "Boombayah". In 2018, Blackpink signed with Interscope Records in a global partnership with YG Entertainment.

  From 2017 to 2018, Jisoo also worked as a television host on the music show Inkigayo. Her co-hosts were Jin-young of Got7 and Doyoung of NCT. Popularity surveys followed. Gallup Korea ranked her the 10th most popular K-pop idol in 2018 and the 17th in 2019. In a 2019 survey of soldiers doing their mandatory military service, she placed sixth among female idols.

  In June 2020, the teasers for the Blackpink single "How You Like That" sent her styling viral. Celebrities and influencers in South Korea, China, Thailand and Vietnam copied her "two-bow hairstyle" and makeup, which Jisoo had created herself. She also originated a makeup idea called the "dot style", which trended on Instagram as overseas fans joined a challenge built around it.

  Her pen also began to appear in the group's catalogue. She took part as a writer on "Lovesick Girls", the third single from the 2020 album The Album. In 2022 she received songwriting credits on "Yeah Yeah Yeah", the fourth track of the second studio album, Born Pink. The next chapter of her career would take place far from a recording studio, in front of a camera.

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• 4. The Screen Roles

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  Song Joong-ki's love interest in the tvN fantasy drama Arthdal Chronicles was Jisoo's first step into television acting in 2019. Her part, Sae Na-rae, was a short cameo in episode 7. She had also dropped into episode 5 of Part-Time Idol in 2017, another brief appearance.

  In 2021, she took her first leading role in the JTBC series Snowdrop. It was helmed by Yoo Hyun-mi, the writer of Sky Castle, and directed by Jo Hyun-tak. Jisoo played Eun Yeong-ro, a college freshman held hostage by Lim Soo-ho, who is also her love interest. Lim Soo-ho is a North Korean agent, portrayed by Jung Hae-in. The series ranked number one on Disney+ in four of the five countries where it was offered, South Korea among them. In September 2022, Jisoo won Outstanding Korean Actress at the Seoul International Drama Awards for the role.

  On the 27th of September 2023, the film Dr. Cheon and Lost Talisman reached cinemas, with Jisoo in a cameo as a Korean traditional fairy.

  Newtopia, a zombie comedy that aired on Coupang Play from February to March 2025, gave her the lead beside Park Jeong-min. It adapts the novel Influenza by Han Sang-Hoon. Han Jin-won, the writer of Parasite, wrote it together with Ji Ho-jin, and Yoon Seong-hyun directed. Jisoo played Kang Young-joo.

  On the 23rd of July 2025, Omniscient Reader: The Prophecy opened. It adapts the webtoon Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint, which she is said to be a fan of. As Lee Ji-hye, opposite Lee Min-ho, she made her big screen debut in a leading role. In 2026 she plays Seo Mi-rae in the series Boyfriend on Demand.

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• 5. A Single Album Called Me

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  On the 2nd of January 2023, YG Entertainment announced that Jisoo would debut as a solo artist within the year. On the 21st of February, her label said filming for the music video was underway at a top-secret location overseas, with the biggest production budget it had ever put into a Blackpink music video.

  The single album Me came out on the 31st of March 2023. It held the lead single "Flower" and the B-side "All Eyes on Me". Me debuted at number one on the Circle Album Chart with 1.03 million copies sold in its first week. That made her the first K-pop female soloist to sell a million copies within a week, and it broke the record for best-selling album by a female soloist in the genre.

  "Flower" reached number two on South Korea's Circle Digital Chart and stayed in the top ten for 12 weeks. Abroad it debuted at number two on the Billboard Global 200, with the third-largest streaming start for any artist's debut track in that chart's history. It also became the highest-peaking song by a Korean female soloist on both the Canadian Hot 100 and the UK Singles Chart.

  She took the song to SBS's Inkigayo and went on to win on nine music shows on South Korean cable programs. They included Triple Crowns on Inkigayo and Show Champion. She also performed it during Blackpink's headlining shows at Coachella in April and at BST Hyde Park in July. By the end of that year, the paperwork around her career would change as dramatically as her sales.

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• 6. Going Independent

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  On the 22nd of November 2023, King Charles III invested Jisoo as an Honorary Member of the Order of the British Empire at Buckingham Palace. Her bandmates received the same honor at the special investiture, which South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol attended.

  Contracts came next. On the 5th of December, YG Entertainment announced that all four Blackpink members had renewed for group activities, with individual deals still under discussion. On the 29th of December, the company confirmed that Jisoo and the others had agreed not to proceed with a contract with the label for solo work.

  On the 21st of February 2024, Jisoo founded her own label, Blissoo. On the 28th of January 2025, it was announced that she had signed a global deal with Warner Records for her solo music. Her first EP, Amortage, came out through Blissoo and Warner on the 14th of February. In South Korea it sold 385,501 copies on its first day, the highest sales debut of the year by a Korean solo artist. By April 2025 it had reached 462,057 copies on the Circle Album Chart. Added to the 1.5 million sales of Me, that put her cumulative solo album sales above two million. She became the top-selling female K-pop soloist in the history of the chart.

  The EP's lead single "Earthquake" gave her a first number one on the US Billboard World Digital Songs chart. In March 2025 she toured fans with a fanmeeting run titled Lights, Love, Action! It opened on the 14th of March at Smart Araneta Coliseum in Quezon City. It went on to Bangkok, Saitama, Macau, Taoyuan and Hong Kong, and finished on the 30th of March at My Dinh Indoor Athletics Arena in Hanoi.

  By then her trophy shelf held two Golden Disc Awards, three MAMA Awards and a Circle Chart Music Award, plus two Seoul International Drama Awards.

  On the 10th of October 2025, she released "Eyes Closed", a duet with the English singer Zayn. It debuted at number 72 on the US Billboard Hot 100, her first entry on that chart as a soloist. In the United Kingdom it opened at number 37, passing "Flower" as her highest-charting entry there. On the Billboard Global Excl. US chart it debuted at number ten, her second top-ten hit after "Flower" and Zayn's first.

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• 7. The Front Row Effect

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  Twelve posts were all it took in 2020. In a Women's Wear Daily ranking of celebrities and influencers leading the world of cosmetics for the first five months of that year, Jisoo placed seventh overall. She posted the fewest times on the list, yet she led it for average engagement per post, ahead of Rihanna and Kylie Jenner. She was the only East Asian included. A year earlier, she was one of only two Korean singers on the BoF 500, an index of people shaping the $2.4 trillion fashion industry.

  In December 2019, she became a local ambassador for Dior Beauty. By the summer of 2020 she was Dior's muse, modeling its Fall/Winter 2020 collection. Dior's sales in South Korea rose during the COVID-19 pandemic, and a campaign with Korean pop singers, Jisoo among them, was credited. In 2021 Dior named her a global ambassador, alongside Natalie Portman and Cara Delevingne.

  Her attendance at the Spring/Summer 2021 showcase earned Dior its highest-rated post since the Fall 2020 show, with a media impact value of 33 percent on average. In June 2021 she wore an all-white linen dress at the Dior Resort 2022 show in Athens, at the Panathenaic Stadium. That September she sat in the front row at Paris Fashion Week next to Dior's chairman and CEO, Pietro Beccari. Ahead of the show, Dior's accounts documented her visit to the ateliers and the archives of the Lady Dior bag, which is named after Princess Diana.

  The figures from that Paris week are striking. Four photos on her personal Instagram were valued at $1.84 million. She was the top celebrity for Dior's media impact value, generating $15.7 million of a total $39.1 million with just two posts. In March 2022, a single photo at the Autumn/Winter 2022 show earned $1.74 million. For Fall/Winter 2024, three posts on the Miss Dior-themed show produced about $11.8 million in earned media value, or 26 percent of the brand's total.

  In April 2022, Dior staged its first-ever Fall show in South Korea, at Ewha Womans University in Seoul. Jisoo attended in a lace black gown. In February 2023 she visited the Dior archives before the Fall/Winter 2023-2024 show and showed particular interest in Catherine Dior, Christian Dior's sister. In September 2024, Francis Kurkdjian, Dior's Director of Perfume Creation, made a fragrance for her alone. It was presented with a personal note.

  Cartier followed a similar path. In September 2020 she became the main model for Pasha de Cartier. On the 25th of May 2022, Cartier named her a brand ambassador. Vogue Korea reported that in 2022 she contributed 45 percent of the brand's total earned media value, through 12 Instagram posts and 24 Instagram Stories. In July 2024 she joined the Cartier Trinity centenary celebrations in Singapore. In March 2025 she debuted the Panthère de Cartier collection at the Louvre dinner.

  In October 2024, Tommy Hilfiger announced her as a global ambassador. Her collaboration with the label at Spring/Summer 2025 New York Fashion Week generated $8 million, 6 percent of the event's total media impact. In 2024, Lefty named her the top fashion influencer in luxury, with an average engagement rate of 5 percent and $227 million in earned media value. Fans on Instagram numbered over 66 million in December 2022, when Time called her the most-followed Korean actress there. By October 2024 she had 79.5 million, fourth among K-pop idols behind Lisa, Jennie and Rosé.

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• 8. Beyond the Stage

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  Samsonite, Smart Uniform, LG Electronics and Nikon all had Jisoo in their advertisements before Blackpink debuted. After the debut, the list grew. In September 2018 she and Rosé became models for the Japanese cosmetics brand Kiss Me. In March 2022 she became only the second ambassador for Nexon's game MapleStory, following the Olympic archer Kim Je-deok. Dyson chose her in December 2023 for its new hair care line. Alo Yoga named her the face of its Spring 2024 campaign. On the 6th of March 2024, the London house Self-Portrait made her the face of its Spring 2024 collection, the first musician in that campaign.

  On the 19th of March 2021, the mobile game KartRider Rush+ released a character she designed in partnership with Line Friends. She sketched the items and ideas herself. One was Chichi, a rabbit inspired by her fan nickname, "Turtle Rabbit Kim". Another was Dalgom, which is also the name of her pet. Both became stickers on Line Messenger. The game's ranking rose to 11th place after the partnership was announced.

  On the 3rd of January 2023, her 28th birthday, she opened a personal YouTube channel called "Happy Jisoo 103%". She promised to donate its proceeds to charity. On the 12th of March 2024, it was revealed that the charity was Save the Children. In March 2025 she gave 150 million won to the Korean Red Cross for wildfire recovery efforts.

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