Chaeyoung Exits JYP After 14 Years, Launches Solo Label Under Her 'LIL FANTASY' Brand

TWICE's Chaeyoung is leaving JYP Entertainment after 14 years, and she's not landing at another agency, she's building her own.

On August 13, Chaeyoung posted a handwritten letter to fans, addressed first to ONCEs, saying she wanted them to hear the news directly from her before anyone else. The plan: build her music career inside her own creative world, which she's calling LIL FANTASY, the same name as her 2024 debut solo album.

The timing matters. Jeongyeon confirmed her own JYP departure just days earlier, signing with Baro Entertainment, the agency run by her older sister, actress Gong Seung-yeon. That's two members out the door in under a month. Member Jihyo also addressed the situation publicly last month, telling fans she was thinking carefully about her next move and would update them as soon as she had something to share. The exits are happening fast, and JYP hasn't said much.

Chaeyoung's statement was warm but deliberate. She thanked JYP staff for supporting her through 14 years of what she called being "a troublemaker," and told the TWICE members she loved them. But she was equally deliberate about what isn't changing: TWICE activities will continue as planned. "The reason I've been loved is because of the time I spent as TWICE, my roots," she wrote. That line reads less like reassurance and more like a position.

The solo track record she's bringing into independence is real. LIL FANTASY Vol. 1, released in September 2024, landed at No. 86 on Rolling Stone's 100 Best Albums of 2025, and made both Forbes and Billboard's lists of the year's top K-pop albums. Launching your own label on the back of that kind of critical run is a different calculation than leaving cold.

Details on the new company's structure are still being worked out. What's clear is that Chaeyoung is betting on LIL FANTASY as a brand, not just an album title. Whether running her own operation while staying an active TWICE member is as clean in practice as it sounds in a letter, that's the part worth watching.