On the night of the 10th, a handwritten letter appeared on Jeongyeon's Instagram. The neat handwriting carried none of the stiffness of an official statement — it read more like a letter to a friend. This also made her the first member to personally step forward amid the wave of speculation over whether TWICE would renew with JYP.
The letter confirmed the news directly: Jeongyeon will be leaving JYP and moving to VAROESM. The agency is no stranger to ONCE, as it's already home to Jeongyeon's sister Jung Yoo-min, as well as actor Byun Woo-seok. In other words, Jeongyeon will now be their junior labelmate. Beyond the departure itself, the choice of agency is what really stands out — it lends concrete backing to earlier speculation about her pivoting toward an acting career.
In the letter, Jeongyeon described JYP, where she spent over a decade, as her "second home." She admitted that leaving such a familiar place "genuinely scared me at first," and that it was her fellow members and ONCE who gave her the courage to take this step. She didn't go into detail about the reasons or terms behind the departure, choosing instead to devote most of the letter to gratitude and farewell.
Notably, she made a point of distinguishing between two identities: "TWICE's Jeongyeon" and "Yoo Jeong-yeon," the person ready to take on new challenges. She wrote that no matter which name she stands before ONCE with, TWICE will always remain at the core of her life, and standing before ONCE will always be her top priority.
So far, only Jeongyeon herself has confirmed the news of her departure. The rest of TWICE and JYP Entertainment have yet to release any official statement, and further developments await a formal response from both sides.
