How IVE's Wonyoung and Yujin Ended Up at Starship, Not Big 4

Jang Wonyoung and Ahn Yujin are two of the most recognizable faces in K-pop, and international fans often assume a group like IVE must trace back to one of Korea's four dominant labels — SM, YG, JYP, or HYBE. It doesn't. Both members signed with Starship Entertainment years before Produce 48, the reality show that made them famous, ever aired.

Their route ran through a street corner, an email inbox, a Korean-Japanese survival show, and a contract that legally expired on schedule — none of it involving the four agencies most casual fans name first. Tracing it explains something broader about how idol groups actually get assembled in Korea, and why a group's most famous faces don't always come from where outsiders expect.

The gap matters because it changes how the whole career reads. Wonyoung and Yujin's public story is usually told starting from IVE's 2021 debut, as if that is where it began. By then both had already spent roughly four years inside one company's agency system — the full scouting-to-promotion pipeline a Korean label runs in-house.

A student scouted at her sister's graduation, not at an SM audition

In April 2017, a Starship Entertainment scout approached a middle-school student attending her older sister's graduation ceremony. That is street casting — agency staff approaching people in public who they think have idol potential, rather than waiting for people to audition. The student was Jang Wonyoung, then thirteen.

Wonyoung later confirmed the story herself on the JTBC talk show Let's Eat Dinner Together, saying she was simply a student when she was cast.

"[I was cast] when going to my older sister's graduation."

She agreed to train with Starship soon afterward.

Yujin got in the door with a self-recorded audition tape

Ahn Yujin's route started differently. In winter 2016, after attending the MelOn Music Awards, she emailed audition clips to several agencies on her own initiative. Starship was the first company to respond.

A second, in-person audition followed, and Yujin joined as a trainee. Unlike Wonyoung, she sought the industry out rather than being approached by it — a reminder that "casting" in K-pop covers more than one method.

Training under the same roof did not guarantee the same outcome

By the time both were named Starship's representatives on Produce 48 in 2018, Wonyoung had trained for one year and two months, Yujin for one year and four months. A third Starship trainee, Cho Kahyeon, competed on the same season.

Kahyeon was eliminated in episode eight. Wonyoung and Yujin went on to debut in IVE three years later; Kahyeon did not, and has since stepped away from the trainee path and worked as a dancer. Sharing an agency and a survival show was no guarantee of sharing an ending.

Training was not spent waiting in silence, either. Wonyoung modeled in a Pepsi Korea music video in early 2018, and Yujin appeared in music videos for Soyou and Baekhyun's "Rain" and Sandeul and Yoo Seungwoo's "Oppa" before either ever stepped onto Produce 48 — small, paid appearances agencies use to keep trainees visible while they wait for a debut opportunity.

One show, twelve winners, and contracts pointing in different directions

Produce 48 was a joint Korean-Japanese Mnet competition where trainees from many separate agencies performed together and were ranked purely by nationwide viewer voting. The top scorers did not join whichever company produced the show — they were assembled into a new, temporary group called a project group.

Wonyoung finished first overall and became the group's center; Yujin finished fifth. Both joined IZ*ONE alongside ten other trainees, none of whom shared an agency.

IZ*ONE answered to more companies than most fans realized

Day-to-day management of IZ*ONE sat with Off the Record, a CJ ENM-linked label, and Swing Entertainment — not with any member's home agency. But every member's original contract with her own company stayed active underneath that arrangement the entire time.

The group's roster made the split ownership visible:

IZ*ONE's group-level contract with CJ ENM's side ran for a fixed two and a half years — a project timeline layered on top of each member's separate, open-ended deal with her own company.

What happened when the two-and-a-half-year clock ran out

Off the Record and Swing Entertainment confirmed on March 10, 2021 that IZ*ONE would disband as originally scheduled. On April 29, 2021, the group's contract with Off the Record expired and IZ*ONE officially ended.

Every Korean member returned to her original company as a trainee once again; the Japanese members returned to their agencies in Japan. For Wonyoung and Yujin, that meant going back to Starship — the company they had technically answered to all along.

Neither member disappeared while Starship prepared its next move. Yujin continued as an MC on the music show Inkigayo, and Wonyoung took on magazine shoots and brand campaigns — the kind of individual work a home agency can offer between group projects, since it still holds each member's underlying contract.

A fan campaign tried to keep the group going. It didn't work.

IZ*ONE's fandom organized a campaign called "Parallel Universe" pushing for a reunion, and in June 2021 CJ ENM confirmed it was discussing the idea with each member's separate agency.

The talks did not produce a reunion. Reviving a project group meant renegotiating with every one of those individual companies at once — the same multi-agency complexity that had defined IZ*ONE from the start, and the reason it could not simply be extended by fan demand.

Starship isn't one of Korea's "Big 4" — that's the point of this story

"Big 4" is industry shorthand, not an official title. It usually refers to HYBE, SM, YG, and JYP, the labels most international fans picture first when they think of a major K-pop group. Starship sits outside that group but is far from a small operation. It was founded in 2008 by Kim Shi-dae, a former BigHit Entertainment employee.

Kakao Entertainment (then Loen Entertainment) bought a majority stake in 2013 and still holds it today. The term "Big 4" itself is recent: for most of the 2000s and 2010s, people spoke of a "Big 3" — SM, YG, and JYP — and only added HYBE after BTS turned it into Korea's most valuable entertainment company.

Starship's own roster shows the scale it already had before IVE:

• Monsta X, debuted 2015
• Cosmic Girls (WJSN), debuted 2015
• Cravity, debuted 2020

Wonyoung and Yujin's return to Starship after IZ*ONE wasn't a fallback option — it was simply where their original, still-active contracts had pointed the entire time.

On November 1, 2021, Starship confirmed what fans had guessed

Speculation about a new Starship girl group featuring the two former IZ*ONE members had circulated for months. Starship confirmed the lineup on November 1, 2021, naming the six-member group IVE, which debuted on December 1, 2021 with the single album "Eleven."

The show that created this path doesn't run anymore

Produce 48 is unlikely to be repeated in its original form. Starting in late 2019, Mnet's producing director admitted in court to manipulating vote rankings across the Produce franchise, including Produce 48 — the season that created IZ*ONE.

He and a co-producer received prison sentences in 2020, and by 2021 most identified victims across the franchise's seasons had received compensation.

Mnet has not aired another debut show of that kind since. The specific route Wonyoung and Yujin took — trainee, cross-agency survival show, project group, then a debut back at their own label — isn't currently open to the next generation of trainees.

IZ*ONE's members and their home agencies

Frequently asked

Is IVE under one of the Big 4 K-pop agencies?

No — IVE is under Starship Entertainment, which sits outside the informal 'Big 4' of HYBE, SM, YG, and JYP.

How did Wonyoung and Yujin end up in IVE?

Both trained at Starship, competed on Produce 48 and joined the project group IZ*ONE, then returned to Starship once IZ*ONE disbanded and debuted in IVE.

Why did IZ*ONE disband?

IZ*ONE's group contract with Off the Record was a fixed two-and-a-half-year project, and it expired on schedule on April 29, 2021.