Jiwoo

A leader who studied ballet

Jiwoo (지우) is the leader of SM Entertainment’s eight-member girl group Hearts2Hearts. When the agency first introduced the members on 5 February 2025, it named her as leader and noted that she had studied ballet. That background came up again in an unexpected place after the debut. In the women’s team pistol-shooting event on MBC’s 2025 Chuseok Special Idol Star Athletics Championships, broadcast on 7 October 2025, commentator Kim Jung-mi said, “Posture is everything in shooting, and I hear Jiwoo did ballet as a child. Her stance was really steady” (Xports News).

A leader’s words

At the media showcase on debut day Jiwoo said, “It is an honour to be able to greet you under the name Hearts2Hearts. Honestly, it still doesn’t quite feel real that we are debuting, but since we have worked hard to reach this moment, we will show you that same hard work.” She named the agency’s seniors Girls’ Generation as the team’s role model, explaining, “The charm of each individual member comes together and creates enormous synergy, doesn’t it?” (The Korea Economic Daily).

When the group receives something, the words of thanks are usually hers. When Hearts2Hearts was appointed an honorary ambassador for the city of Seoul in June 2025, she said, “Because it is the city where Hearts2Hearts came together and grew our dreams, we have a great affection for Seoul” (Metro Seoul). When the group received the Next Leader award at the 2025 TMA on 20 September, she looked back — “Seven months have passed, from ‘The Chase’ to ‘STYLE’” — on the time spent on good stages and meeting fans (The Fact).

Explaining the records falls to her too. At the showcase for the first mini album FOCUS on 20 October she summed up the two singles before it: “If ‘The Chase’ showed the beginning of Hearts2Hearts and raised expectations, through ‘STYLE’ we were able to take a step closer to our fans.” This album, she said, carried “the ambition to catch people’s eye” by showing the group’s colour more clearly (MBC Entertainment). At the showcase for the second mini album Lemon Tang on 22 June 2026 she introduced it this way: “This is an album that is sincere about the heart, our team’s symbol. The heart is in every lyric, in the title track and in the other tracks too. Finding it will be part of the fun” (Dailian). Of the two trophies the group had received at the Asia Star Entertainer Awards at Belluna Dome in Japan a month earlier, she told Newsen, “I am truly grateful and happy that we could receive two such big awards.”

Stages she has hosted

A large hosting job came two months after the debut. On 21 March 2025 Xports News reported that Jiwoo would host SEOUL WONDER SHOW, the concert opening the Seoul Spring Festa at Seoul World Cup Stadium on 30 April, with actor Wi Ha-jun and Kyujin of NMIXX. On 28 September she hosted episode 1284 of SBS’s Inkigayo as a special MC with CORTIS’s Juhoon and Keonho, and on 30 August 2026, for episode 1322, she took the special MC seat again with her bandmate Ian (Topstar News).

Work with UNICEF

In September 2025 Jiwoo took part in ‘UNICEF Team’, a campaign marking ten years of collaboration between SM Entertainment and the Korean Committee for UNICEF. According to Star News, all eleven SM artists in it donated their work, and the campaign video and photo shoot were also published through the fashion magazine Marie Claire, which worked on it. In her Marie Claire Korea interview she said, “I don’t think size or amount matters when you share or give something,” adding, “I believe that when the smallest beginnings come together, they will have great power.”

In Future Interviewers (미래면접관), the Korean Committee for UNICEF’s YouTube series released on 3 July 2026, she appeared with Carmen as the seventh pair of interviewees and answered questions from a panel of child interviewers (The Gate). The two said, “Thanks to the child interviewers’ pure perspective and sharp questions, it became a chance for us to learn a lot instead and to look back on ourselves” (The Hankyoreh).