All 6 Weeekly members terminate contracts and leave IST Entertainment

All six members of Weeekly have terminated their exclusive contracts and will leave IST Entertainment, according to a statement by the company.

We would like to share our official stance regarding the conclusion of Weeekly members’s (Lee Soojin, Monday, Park Soeun, Lee Jaehee, Jihan, Zoa) exclusive contracts and future activities.
After extensive discussions about their future endeavors, we have mutually agreed to respect each other’s decisions and conclude their exclusive contracts.

In a way this was a bit ahead of schedule since the little sister group to Apink debuted in 2020 and it’s been less than five years. However, their sales on their last album were down over 60% among the overall market regression and they had lost the momentum they had in 2021. Also, four members participating on Queendom Puzzle in 2023 probably wasn’t the best sign. In retrospect, it’s hard not to look at their “Ven Para” concept change the company choose as the turning point even though they had quality releases after that. Another unfortunate example that fandom strength will always be more important to K-pop groups, because public support is extremely fickle or even utterly meaningless (like people yelling about supporting girl groups on Twitter but doing nothing materially).