TWICE leader Jihyo has ended her 21-year relationship with JYP Entertainment and launched her own agency, Emithaus, while vowing that her bond with the nine-member girl group is going nowhere. The 29-year-old singer, who has been with the company since she was a child trainee, broke the news in a handwritten letter posted to Instagram on October 21, 2026. She is the third TWICE member to step out from under the JYP umbrella while staying committed to the group that made her a global star.
The Letter That Closed 21 Years
"After 21 years, my journey with JYP Entertainment, which began when I was just a child, has come to an end," Jihyo wrote in Korean, adding an English translation for her international fans. She joined JYP at just eight years old and trained for roughly a decade before debuting as TWICE's leader and main vocalist in 2015, after competing on the survival show "Sixteen."
She admitted that summarizing two decades in a few sentences was "harder than I thought," and thanked the company and its staff for standing by her from childhood into adulthood, saying the good days and difficult days alike "have shaped who I am today." Her post also included video of her childhood auditions, a glimpse at the little girl who started it all. The news had been brewing since July 2026, when JoyNews24 first reported she was preparing to leave; JYP said at the time only that TWICE was in contract renewal talks.
What Exactly Is Emithaus?
Emithaus takes its name from the word "emit," meaning to express or release. "To me, independence is not so much a conclusion about the time that has passed, but a choice about how I want to live going forward," she wrote. "I hope this will be a place where I can freely explore and bring to life even the possibilities within me that I have yet to discover."
The company will manage her solo activities first, with plans to grow into music and content production and eventually bring in other artists. She pledged to approach "every future choice and activity with greater care and a stronger sense of responsibility." One day after the letter, she shared a new set of bold portraits on Instagram captioned "A New Chapter," the first look at Jihyo on her own terms.
TWICE Stays Together
The most emotional passage of the letter was her promise to the group and to ONCE, the fandom. "This choice does not mean a farewell to the team I have been with for so long," she wrote. "TWICE is an irreplaceable part of my life. I want to keep standing on the same stage with my members and create many more memories together for years to come."
Jihyo follows Jeongyeon and Chaeyoung, who left JYP in August 2026, with Jeongyeon signing with VARO Entertainment and Chaeyoung launching a solo project called LIL FANTASY. Each departure carried the same vow: the group endures.
That vow matters. TWICE, which debuted in October 2015 with "Like Ooh-Ahh" and gave the world "TT," "Fancy," and "Feel Special," just passed its 11th debut anniversary. Jihyo herself made a celebrated solo debut in 2023 with the EP "Zone," led by the single "Killin' Me Good." On the same day she posted her letter, JYP confirmed that Nayeon is preparing a solo comeback for the third week of November.
Music in this post's reel: Kevin MacLeod - Life of Riley (incompetech.com), licensed under CC BY 3.0
The takeaway: Twenty-one years is not a career, it is a lifetime, and Jihyo spent hers building one of K-pop's greatest girl groups. Her letter reads less like a resignation and more like a graduation. For ONCE, the line that mattered was written in plain terms: she is not leaving TWICE. The group stays, the leader stays, and the next chapter begins with the fans who watched a child trainee grow into an artist willing to bet on herself.