fromis_9 Star Reveals She Feared Card Declines While Paying for Meals After Years of No Pay

Park Jiwon of fromis_9 told the cast of Ask Us Anything she spent seven years in the industry without earning a single won of her own, kept afloat by pocket money from her mother. That was the sentence that stopped the studio cold on the August 29 episode of JTBC's long-running variety show.

"We genuinely had a hard time," she said. "For seven years, there was no income." When co-host Kim Shinyoung pointed out that no income meant no settlement payments either, Jiwon confirmed it: she worked without ever receiving a settlement and relied on her mom's allowance just to get by.

The details got more specific from there. "There were times I had to pick up the check," she said, "and I'd be a nervous wreck hitting pay, terrified the card would say insufficient funds."

She tied part of the rough run to COVID-19, which wiped out much of the group's activity schedule during what should have been formative years. Even so, she stayed measured about it. "The members worked hard and we care deeply about the group. We've had our failures. We came back last month."

Co-host Kwak Bum then carefully asked whether settlements are happening now. Jiwon smiled. "These days, yeah, it's going a bit better."

Kwak offered some context for why: Jiwon is currently one of four MCs on Workdol, a show generating serious buzz in the idol content space, a gig that has raised her profile considerably.

How she got here

Jiwon's road to fromis_9 was anything but direct. She trained at JYP Entertainment and appeared on Sixteen, the survival show that produced TWICE, but was eliminated. She then competed on Mnet's Idol School and debuted as part of fromis_9 through that program.

The fact that a group now in its seventh year is only recently seeing meaningful financial returns is a reminder of how the math works for most idol acts outside the industry's upper tier. The trainee debt model, slow streaming growth, and COVID-era activity gaps can quietly stack up for years before the numbers flip. Jiwon didn't frame it as a complaint, but she didn't dress it up either.