How Ex-Idol Jo Aram Became a Two-Time Best New Actress

On December 30, 2025, actress Jo Aram stood on the MBC Drama Awards stage in Seoul to collect the Best New Actress trophy for her role in To the Moon. It was not her first newcomer prize. Two years earlier, almost to the day, she had won the same category at the APAN Star Awards for Doctor Cha.

Winning Best New Actress twice, at two different major Korean television ceremonies, four years into a screen career, is unusual on its own. What makes it notable to Korean audiences is where she started: Jo Aram debuted in 2016 as one of nine members of the girl group Gugudan, left in 2018, and spent roughly four years outside the entertainment industry before coming back as an actress.

Two best new actress trophies, four years apart

Jo Aram's first win came at the 2023 APAN Star Awards, held December 30, 2023, for her role as surgical resident Jeon So-ra in JTBC's medical drama Doctor Cha. She shared the Best New Actress prize that night with Lee Han-byeol, recognized for Mask Girl.

Her second win landed exactly two years later, on December 30, 2025, at the MBC Drama Awards, for playing accounting-team employee Kim Ji-song in To the Moon — a drama about three women from working-class families who turn to cryptocurrency investing to survive on their salaries. That award was also shared, with actress Hong Su-ju.

The insult that still follows idol-actors into casting rooms

International viewers who know Jo Aram only as an actress may not register why two shared newcomer trophies matter. In Korea, a performer who debuted as a K-pop idol carries a label: 연기돌 (yeon-gi-dol, roughly "acting idol") — shorthand for the assumption that a role went to them for name recognition rather than skill.

The stigma is specific enough that actors describe it as an open wound in interviews. Actor Lee Jun-young, who debuted in the boy group U-KISS before moving into acting, has said the most hurtful thing anyone ever told him was "don't cause trouble for real actors" — implying an idol had no business sharing a set with people who trained for the job.

How one generation of idol-actors rewrote the industry's rules

That prejudice has eased only because a small number of idol-actors forced a reassessment. EXO's Doh Kyung-soo won Best New Actor at the 2017 Blue Dragon Film Awards, one of Korea's most prestigious film honors. Veteran actress Yeom Jung-ah later said of him: "D.O. broke down every prejudice that existed against idol-turned-actors."

Im Siwan, who debuted in the boy group ZE:A, is cited alongside Doh Kyung-soo as proof the label can be shed, through the 2013 film The Attorney and the 2014 drama Misaeng.

Korean entertainment coverage in late 2025 pointed to a newer generation, including ITZY's Ryujin and WEi's Kim Dong-han, following the same route: small supporting parts and formal acting lessons well before any lead role, rather than a lead handed over on debut fame alone.

That is the sequence Jo Aram followed, by design or by circumstance. Before Doctor Cha made her recognizable, her credits were modest:

• A minor role in a 2022 tvN drama that marked her acting debut
• A supporting part in KBS's 2023 anthology series Drama Special
• The lead in 2023's Victory, Korea's first cheerleading-themed film

Debuting in the shadow of a survival-show star

Jo Aram's idol career began under unusual circumstances. Gugudan, the nine-member group she debuted in on June 28, 2016, was launched by Jellyfish Entertainment around a trainee who had just become one of the most talked-about names in the country: Kim Se-jeong.

Kim Se-jeong placed second on Mnet's Produce 101 (2016), the reality competition that assembled the temporary project group I.O.I. She has since said she almost turned the show down entirely: "I turned it down because I was already part of the pre-debut team at my agency that was going to debut as Gugudan."

She joined anyway, finished runner-up, and debuted with I.O.I weeks before Gugudan's own launch.

For the other eight members, including Jo Aram, that meant debuting inside a group whose center of gravity was, structurally, already fixed on one person before a single Gugudan song had been released.

Leaving at nineteen, with no backup plan

Jo Aram left Gugudan in October 2018, during her final year of high school, citing health reasons. "I was exhausted, mentally and physically," she said in a 2022 interview. "It took a long time, thinking it over, reconsidering, going back over it again, before I could make that decision."

She spent the following years largely outside the industry, working part-time jobs while she figured out what came next. Gugudan itself continued with eight members until Jellyfish Entertainment confirmed its formal disbandment, effective December 31, 2020, though members later said the group had stopped functioning as early as 2019.

Acting was not an immediate plan. She has described landing on Seoul Institute of the Arts' acting program almost by elimination, looking for a path to college that would still let her keep dancing, something she loved.

A surgical resident who needed no idol backstory to be liked

Jo Aram signed with agency Beyond J and announced her return to entertainment as an actress on March 4, 2022. Her breakout came the following year in Doctor Cha, where she played Jeon So-ra, a blunt, sharp-tongued third-year surgical resident who spends the drama's first half clashing with the title character, played by Uhm Jung-hwa, before the two build the show's emotional core together.

Korean entertainment outlets credited the role with making her a breakout, praising her visuals, screen presence, and acting in the same sentence. Notably, most of that coverage barely mentioned Gugudan at all — a sign, in an industry that usually leads with an idol's group name, that the role was being judged on its own terms.

Two Gugudan alumnae, one stage, four years later

The story closed a loop at the same December 2025 ceremony where Jo Aram won her second Best New Actress award. Kim Se-jeong, her former Gugudan groupmate and by then an established actress in her own right, won the Top Excellence Award and Best Couple Award that same night, for a different series that swept seven prizes in total.

Fan reaction to the pairing was warm. Comment sections under the news coverage filled with lines like "I miss Gugudan" — a small, unplanned reunion between two members of a group that most casual K-pop fans stopped following years ago.

What a shared trophy does, and does not, prove

Both of Jo Aram's Best New Actress wins were shared, with Lee Han-byeol in 2023 and Hong Su-ju in 2025. Korean television awards routinely split newcomer categories between two or more recipients, so the split does not diminish the recognition, but it does mean she has not yet won a rookie prize outright.

She has also not yet carried a drama or film as its sole lead. Doctor Cha and To the Moon were both ensemble pieces built around established stars, and Victory, while a starring film role, was a smaller genre release rather than a major theatrical one.

Whether Jo Aram moves from strong supporting work to a project built entirely around her, the test that usually separates a promising newcomer from an established lead, is still an open question. For now, two trophies mark a rookie who no longer needs her idol past explained in the credits.

Jo Aram's two Best New Actress wins

Frequently asked

Was Jo Aram in a K-pop group?

Yes, she debuted in 2016 as one of nine members of the girl group Gugudan and left in 2018.

What awards has Jo Aram won?

She won Best New Actress at the 2023 APAN Star Awards for Doctor Cha and again at the 2025 MBC Drama Awards for To the Moon.

Is Jo Aram related to Kim Se-jeong?

They were Gugudan groupmates; Kim Se-jeong won the Top Excellence Award and Best Couple Award at the same December 2025 ceremony where Jo Aram won her second Best New Actress trophy.