Do we like Nayeon?
Our score: 7 out of 10. A clean record on harm and a long run of donations, marked down only because the record on what she thinks about causes is thin and she just sang with a divisive duet partner.
Nayeon is one of the main faces of TWICE, one of K-pop's biggest girl groups, and by mid-2024 she had almost ten years in the industry. She's told Soompi she didn't have much freedom as a trainee or in the early days after debut, and that the attention can make it scary just to walk outside. That's the price tag on the fame she's got.
She was also the first TWICE member to go solo, and it worked. Her debut EP IM NAYEON had the single POP! peak at No. 7 on the Billboard 200, and her follow-up NA, with the title track ABCD, gave her a second top-10 entry on that chart. Not bad for the quiet-spoken one in a nine-piece.
The ugliest part of her story is not of her making. In January 2020 she was put under police protection after an alleged stalker, reportedly a German man, followed her onto a flight, and JYP said it would take the highest level of legal action. She wasn't physically harmed, but the case shows how little privacy a star at her level gets.
Her one proper own-goal is small. In 2016 she posted a screenshot of herself streaming a Taeyeon song from an unofficial upload, deleted it, then apologised, saying she'd been too flippant and promising to use only official music services. Owning it quickly is a decent sign, and it's about as scandalous as her record gets.
On the harm check, the record is thin rather than bad. We found nothing from Nayeon on trans rights, women's issues, vaccines, climate or politics, and no evidence of her campaigning, donating to or platforming anyone who pushes harm. That's honestly the whole list: absence of evidence, not a stance either way, and she describes herself as a person who shows exactly who she is.
The recent stoush is the Charlie Puth duet. Some TWICE fans said they hoped it was a one-off, others picked at her vocals, and some commenters pointed to controversies around Puth himself. It's one stage guest slot, no joint release has been announced, and she hasn't been reported as saying anything about it, so it earns an asterisk and nothing more. Meanwhile her NA-sty single is due on 20 November, her first solo comeback in about two years and five months.