Do we like them?

Do we like Jennie Kim?

Our score: 7 out of 10. Nothing harmful found and real donations on record, but the record on her views is thin and there is one apologised-for slip.

Jennie is the Blackpink member who went solo and became a fashion-house fixture. By her own account in interviews, her trainee years were gruelling and cut into her childhood. That long, tough grind is the backstory behind the polished pop star.

She's had a big 2026. Time put her on its list of the 100 most influential people of the year, and in May she performed an unreleased song at a Chanel event in Seoul. Nothing hard-news bad has landed on her lately that we could confirm from a source we could date.

Her main stumble was in July 2024, when a video from her own YouTube channel showed her vaping indoors. It sparked a backlash in South Korea. Her agency issued an apology saying she regretted it and the inconvenience to staff. It's a small, one-off slip rather than a pattern, and the apology was prompt.

On the harm check, we found no harmful statements from her about LGBTQ+ people, women, migrants or the planet. We also found no campaigning for anything nasty. The honest gap is that she rarely speaks on politics, so there's little in her own words either way. The work trail we checked is mainly the group's music and luxury fashion partnerships.

The good stuff is real money. In February 2026 she donated 100 million won, about US$70,000, to help elderly people in need of winter coal briquettes, partly funded from a photo exhibition. It's the latest in a run of big donations she's been reported making over the last couple of years.

So, would we support her? Yes. She isn't preaching, and she hasn't been caught pushing anything harmful. The one asterisk is the vaping incident, handled with an apology, and the thin record on where she stands on the issues we care about. This run we couldn't open full articles, so treat it as a light-touch check.