Yoo Jeong-yeon

Yoo Jeong-yeon (Korean: 유정연; Hanja: 俞定延; born 1 November 1996),known mononymously as Jeongyeon (Korean: 정연), is a South Korean singer. She is a member of Twice, a South Korean girl group formed by JYP Entertainment.

Jeongyeon was born as Yoo Kyung-wan on 1 November 1996 in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province, South Korea. She has two older sisters, one of whom is the actress Gong Seung-yeon. Her father was a chef who worked for Kim Dae-jung, a past president of South Korea. Jeongyeon took aerobics classes at a young age and soon developed an early interest in singing and dancing.

Pre-debut

Jeongyeon failed an audition to join JYP Entertainment as a child, but eventually joined after passing an open audition in March 2010. She trained for five years before her debut with Twice. From 2013 to early 2015, it was expected that Jeongyeon would become a member of a new JYP girl group alongside current Twice members Nayeon, Sana, and Jihyo. However, this project was cancelled and in the end they did not debut. In 2015, Jeongyeon competed in the television programSixteen, a reality television competition designed to select the founding members of Twice. In the final episode, she was chosen as one of the nine winners who went on to form Twice.

Twice and solo activities

In October 2015 Jeongyeon officially debuted as a member of Twice with their first extended play, The Story Begins. The lead single "Like Ooh-Ahh" was the first K-pop debut song to reach 100 million views on YouTube. Jeongyeon and her sister co-hosted the South Korean music program Inkigayo from July 2016 to January 2017, for which they both won the Newcomer Award at the 2016 SBS Entertainment Awards. Since Jeongyeon's debut, she has also served as the songwriter for some of Twice's tracks. In Gallup Korea's annual music poll, Jeongyeon was voted among the top 20 most popular idols in South Korea for four consecutive years from 2016 to 2019, alongside her bandmate Nayeon.

Soundtrack appearances