Why K-Pop Groups Build Around a 'Center' Member

When Starship Entertainment introduced IVE in December 2021, one trainee's profile went up before the rest: Jang Wonyoung, then 17, was named the group's center and visual from the first teaser. That was not a fan nickname. It was a job title the agency assigned before the group had released a single song.

Four years later, Korean outlets started calling her personal brand roster the "Wonyoung ETF" — a joke, but an accurate one, about how much of a group's commercial identity can sit on one member. That practice has a name, a formal history, and a business logic international fans usually never see explained.

A center is a formation slot before it's a compliment

In K-pop staging, the center is the member placed in the middle of the formation during a song's chorus, opening pose, and "killing part" — the most memorable few seconds of choreography. It is distinct from "visual," a separate, usually fixed label for the member whose look anchors magazine and ad casting.

Center, by contrast, is assigned by the agency and can rotate between comebacks. What makes a handful of recent cases different is that the center assignment became permanent and extended off the stage entirely, into advertising, hosting, and brand strategy.

Nine unrelated brands, one face, in a single 2026 ad

In March 2026, whiskey brand Jim Beam released a campaign that also featured Woori Bank, Amuse, Medicube, Eider, Dashing Diva, Tommy Jeans, Dyson, and Kérastase — nine companies with no shared industry or audience, sharing one endorser.

• Finance (Woori Bank)
• Beauty devices (Medicube)
• Outdoor apparel (Eider)
• Home appliances (Dyson)

Korea Times and Kyunghyang's Sports Khan both reported that Korean internet users coined the term "Wonyoung ETF" — comparing her endorsement portfolio to a diversified investment fund. The label stuck because it was measurable, not just funny.

Per Launchmetrics, her media impact value at Paris Fashion Week in 2024 reached $425.5 million. She was also mentioned more than three billion times on the Chinese platform Xiaohongshu that year, more than every BLACKPINK member except Jennie.

By 2025 she had surpassed her own groupmate An Yujin's earlier record for the most brand deals held by a fourth-generation female idol. In 2026 she added global ambassador titles for Miu Miu Beauty in South Korea and Japan and for the skincare brand Dr. Althea.

Why concentrating fame is cheaper than spreading it

Six members each have a fraction of the public's attention; one center can plausibly carry a fragrance line, a bank ad, and a vacuum cleaner campaign in the same month. For an agency, a single, heavily documented face is easier to license across categories than six partial, competing images.

That is the financial logic behind the strategy: it turns one trainee's individual popularity into a group's shared revenue stream, well before the group's music has to prove anything on its own.

The same logic reshaped casting. A trainee's existing following, prior reality-show exposure, or brand-friendly image now factors into an agency's decisions long before a group's sound or concept is finalized.

A televised vote turned 'center' into a title with a paper trail

Mnet's Produce 101 survival franchise — a genre Korean broadcasters call a "survival show," where trainees from competing agencies are voted into a single project group — made the center system explicit. Whoever finished first in the final vote was named the group's center for its entire run.

The show called its voting public "national producers," pitching the idea that ordinary viewers, not agencies, decided who led each group. Jeon Somi topped the first season in 2016 to become I.O.I's center, after already building a following on a separate JYP trainee survival show the year before.

Kang Daniel won season two in 2017 with over 1.5 million individual votes out of more than 16 million cast in the finale, becoming Wanna One's center. Wonyoung followed the same path in 2018, finishing first in the Korea–Japan spin-off Produce 48 with 338,366 votes, decided on her 14th birthday, to become IZ*ONE's center.

The vote that made a member 'center' was later confirmed rigged

In December 2019, Korean prosecutors and the broadcasting regulator KCSC concluded that Mnet producers had manipulated rankings in all four Produce 101 seasons, including Produce 48. Two producers were arrested and later sentenced to prison for fraud.

IZ*ONE's comeback was delayed for three months while the case was investigated; the trainees themselves were not accused of wrongdoing. The scandal did not end the center system — it just meant agencies stopped outsourcing the decision to a vote and started making it directly, the way Starship did with Wonyoung three years later.

(G)I-DLE built its center around a songwriting credit, not a formation slot

Not every group's "one member" strategy is about the camera. Jeon Soyeon, leader of Cube Entertainment's (G)I-DLE, is the group's general producer, writing or co-producing most of its catalog — including debut single "LATATA," "Lion," and "Super Lady," which she also co-directed.

In June 2021, Soyeon became the first fourth-generation girl-group member listed on the top-100 chart of KOMCA, Korea's music-copyright registry, ranking third overall. Female idol-producers remain rare enough that only a handful of precedents exist, among them EXID's LE and members of the disbanded group Pristin.

Soyeon has said she hopes not to remain a rare case, adding that she doesn't understand why so few women in the industry write and produce their own material when, in her words, it's something they genuinely want to do.

NewJeans gave four members their own music video instead of one center

ADOR took the opposite approach when it launched NewJeans in 2022. For the single "Hype Boy," the label released four separate music videos, each centered on a different member's own storyline, rather than one formation with a single focal point.

It is a small production choice, but a deliberate one: instead of designating a center, the agency let each member anchor her own version of the same song.

A single center changes what the rest of the group is for

Building marketing around one face does not remove the other members — it changes their role. Fan and critic discussion of K-pop "line distribution," how many seconds of a song each member sings, recurs constantly because it is the clearest proxy for who an agency is investing in.

When one member is also the commercial anchor, that imbalance is no longer just about vocals. It extends into who fronts the ads, who gets renewed contracts first, and whose individual schedule the group's promotion calendar bends around.

Whether the strategy survives past one member's career

The center system has existed in something like its current, brand-driven form for only a few years, so there is no long track record of what happens when a center's individual career outgrows the group's, or when she eventually leaves the agency.

Wonyoung, Kang Daniel, and Somi all owe their center status to a Produce 101 voting system that regulators later found had been manipulated — a reminder that even the industry's most "democratic"-looking selection method was, in the end, an agency decision dressed up as a public one.

What is documented is the dependency itself: a group's brand-deal revenue, media coverage, and audition-era origin story increasingly trace back to one contract, one vote, or one songwriting credit — which is precisely what makes the arrangement efficient, and precisely what makes it fragile.

Three approaches to building a group around one member

Frequently asked

What does 'center' mean in K-pop?

The center is the member placed in the middle of the formation during a song's chorus and its most memorable choreography moment, a title assigned by the agency rather than a fan nickname.

What is the 'Wonyoung ETF'?

A nickname Korean media coined for Jang Wonyoung's endorsement portfolio, comparing her deals across unrelated industries like banking, beauty devices, and appliances to a diversified investment fund.

Was Produce 101 rigged?

Yes. In December 2019, Korean prosecutors and the broadcasting regulator KCSC concluded Mnet producers had manipulated rankings in all four Produce 101 seasons, and two producers were later sentenced to prison.