JISOO (지수)

Early Life and Family

Kim Ji-soo was born on January 3, 1995, in Gunpo, Gyeonggi Province, South Korea. She is the youngest of three children, with an older brother and an older sister, and she grew up in a close, multi-generational household alongside her parents and grandparents. As a child she was active in sports, playing basketball and practicing taekwondo, and she once dreamed of becoming a painter or a novelist rather than a performer — she has said she wrote horror stories as a young teenager. She attended the prestigious School of Performing Arts Seoul (SOPA), a high school that has produced many K-pop idols, where she joined the drama club in her second year and began attending entertainment auditions.

Trainee Years and Pre-Debut Activities

In 2011, Jisoo successfully auditioned for YG Entertainment and began roughly five years of trainee preparation, developing her singing, dancing, and acting skills. Before her official debut, she appeared in a handful of music videos and television cameos that hinted at her future star power: she played a heartbroken love interest in Epik High’s “Spoiler + Happy Ending” and in Hi Suhyun’s “I’m Different,” both released in 2014, and she made a brief televised cameo in the 2015 KBS2 drama The Producers alongside fellow YG trainees.

BLACKPINK Debut and Rise to Global Fame

Jisoo officially debuted on August 8, 2016, as a member of BLACKPINK alongside Jennie, Rosé, and Lisa, with the single album Square One. The group’s name was designed to convey that the members are “more than beauty” — combining the elegance associated with pink and the power and edge associated with black. BLACKPINK quickly became one of the fastest-rising girl groups in K-pop history, scoring hits with “Whistle,” “Boombayah,” “Playing with Fire,” and “As If It’s Your Last,” before achieving true global crossover success with “Ddu-Du Ddu-Du” (2018), “Kill This Love” (2019), “How You Like That,” “Ice Cream” with Selena Gomez, and “Lovesick Girls” (2020). Their 2020 studio album The Album became the best-selling album ever by a Korean female act at the time, and 2022’s Born Pink made BLACKPINK the first female K-pop act to top the U.S. Billboard 200, earning the group multiple Guinness World Records along the way. As a vocalist, Jisoo is recognized for her warm, sweet, slightly husky tone, and she has also contributed as a songwriter, co-writing “Lovesick Girls” from The Album and “Yeah Yeah Yeah” from Born Pink.

Acting Breakthrough

In 2021, Jisoo took her first lead acting role in the JTBC series Snowdrop, playing a 1987 college student, Eun Yeong-ro, opposite Jung Hae-in. The series ranked number one on Disney+ in several territories and earned Jisoo the Outstanding Korean Actress award at the 2022 Seoul International Drama Awards — her first major individual acting honor. She returned to acting in 2025 in the zombie-comedy series Newtopia on Coupang Play, playing lead character Kang Yeong-ju opposite Park Jung-min; the series became one of the platform’s most-watched original productions and won her the Outstanding Asian Star award at the 2025 Seoul International Drama Awards. The same year, she made her feature-film debut in the action-fantasy Omniscient Reader: The Prophecy alongside Lee Min-ho. In early 2026, she returned to the small screen as the lead of the Netflix romantic comedy Boyfriend on Demand, playing a burned-out webtoon producer who explores a virtual dating-simulation app — a role she has described as a fun, bubbly change of pace that let her show different sides of her personality.

Solo Music Career and BLISSOO

Jisoo made her solo musical debut on March 31, 2023 with the single album ME, led by the single “Flower.” The release shattered sales records, becoming the best-selling album by a female Korean soloist in Circle Chart history and selling over a million copies within days. After BLACKPINK’s Born Pink world tour wrapped in 2023, Jisoo left YG Entertainment to pursue solo ventures independently, founding her own management label, BLISSOO, in February 2024. In January 2025, she signed a global recording deal with Warner Records, and on Valentine’s Day 2025 she released her debut solo EP, AMORTAGE, a four-track project exploring different stages of love through a mix of Korean and English songs. Led by the single “Earthquake,” the EP broke first-day and first-week sales records for a Korean female soloist in 2025 and pushed Jisoo’s cumulative solo album sales past two million copies, making her the best-selling female K-pop soloist in chart history. In October 2025, she released “Eyes Closed,” a duet with British singer Zayn, which became her first entry on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 as a solo artist.

Fashion, Business, and Philanthropy

Jisoo has become one of the most prominent fashion ambassadors to emerge from K-pop. She has served as a global ambassador for Dior since 2021 (after starting as a regional Dior Beauty ambassador in 2019) and as a brand ambassador for Cartier since 2022, regularly appearing front row at major fashion shows in Paris, Seoul, and New York. She has also fronted campaigns for brands including Tommy Hilfiger, Alo Yoga, and Dyson, and she was the star of Dior’s Haute Couture Spring-Summer 2025 show. Alongside her public profile, Jisoo is known for quiet philanthropic work: she launched the YouTube channel “Happy Jisoo 103%” with proceeds donated to Save the Children, contributed funds to Korean Red Cross wildfire-recovery efforts in 2025, and privately donated to a children’s hospital in Seoul.

Recent Activities (2025–2026)

Jisoo reunited with BLACKPINK for their first new collection of music since Born Pink: the digital single “Jump” (July 2025) and the third Korean mini-album, DEADLINE (February 27, 2026), released to mark the group’s tenth anniversary. The era was supported by the BLACKPINK Deadline world tour. Around the same period, Jisoo balanced her busiest individual schedule yet — releasing AMORTAGE, headlining her own fan-meet tour “Lights, Love, Action!,” filming Newtopia and Omniscient Reader: The Prophecy, releasing “Eyes Closed” with Zayn, and starring in Boyfriend on Demand — cementing her position as one of the most versatile and in-demand idols of the current K-pop generation.