Another closure has arrived in the multitude of recent idol departures from the various popular SM Entertainment pop groups. Jessica Jung (Jung Soo Yeon) has officially left SM as an artist, ending her contract with the agency almost a year from when she was kicked out of top SM girl group SNSD (Girl’s Generation). Her departure from SM was as cordial as it gets, with SM releasing the first statement of Jessica ending her contract with the agency and wishing her well, and then Jessica following with her own statement thanking SM for everything.
Since Jessica left SNSD almost a year ago, the group has been promoting just fine with a comeback earlier this summer. Jessica herself hasn’t done any singing or even acting since leaving SNSD, spending last year promoting herself and her brand of fashion sunglasses. I personally don’t care for Jessica but this is a good story to show that departures from groups or agencies don’t have to be nuclear options. SNSD is fine, Jessica is fine, and especially SM is fine after it all went down. See? There is life after groups go down members and/or disband.
Jessica’s amicable and mutual separation from SM gives me hope that SM is capable of not pursuing a rocks fall down ending. As much as Jessica benefited from SM’s training and promotion as part of SNSD to now have her own solo brand name out there, the same goes for SM profiting from the efforts Jessica put in when she was part of the agency. It goes both ways and in the end of the day there ought to be an understanding that if an entertainer wants to leave there is no strong-arming to keep him or her because an entertainment contract is what is deemed a “performance” contract in legal parlance.
That means the entertainer’s obligations in the contract is to “perform”, i.e. to do certain things, and the courts are always loathe to enforce performance contracts because it forces people to do things against their will. With Jessica out, currently SM remains mired in three high profile boy member departures with Kris (Wu Yi Fan), Luhan, and Tao (Huang Zi Tao) from top guy group EXO, all of which are or will likely be litigated. There is also Sulli‘s departure from f(x) but remaining under the SM umbrella, which looks more and more likely to end the same way as it did with Jessica.
happy for her i hope the rest solve their issues too.it now or never.
Officially amicable. More like she was ousted and ditched but had aces up her sleeves to “quietly” leave. Plus she may have had to sign a contract to keep things to herself. Besides she didn’t say a word on her former group mates in her official statement, which I find telling.
Sure. It seems like it ended on good terms, but SM has a reputation of blacklisting their former talents. I wonder if Jessica will ever be allowed to freely promote her music in Korea (if she still wants to do music) without SM’s interference. They haven’t been able to influence her activities much since she’s mainly in Hong Kong/China these days.
It’s more like SM just decided that they don’t need Jessica at all, so they’re just kicking her out completely.
SM is fine. But will Jessica be fine? Time will tell, i guess.
Considering she got kicked out of SNSD and they slandered her to high heaven it only made sense for them to let her go…and it took 10 months. Within that time, prior to the Korean comeback, SNSD literally had 17 days of activity. There was no reason to kick her out.
Considering that the time they appear on broadcast don’t show the hours they put into work for recordings, rehearsals, and shooting… I’d say her leaving or being let go was the proper thing to do. Her heart wasn’t in it. And the crazy schedules of SNSD during comeback week itself shows that she couldn’t have run her business WHILE SNSD was promoting.
What a LIAR you are. The SNSD girls have not slandered JESSICA at all!! Jessica was the person who slandered them on 9/30 of last year on her Weibo post. The 8 snsd girls have not said anything rude on public or SMS to Jessica. So stop lying!
I wonder why she was allowed to leave bt the exo guys r getting pounded left and right? Hmm….
She is KICKED from snsd.. And eventually leave SM after months of resolution.
She left after her first contract has ended. She stayed with the group for 7years.
EXO guys left the group 2-3 years after debut. Before their contract has ended.
That’s the difference.
her greed for money is her down fall. she even blame her other meber for her leaving the group. when in reality she was just looking for a way to get fan to fall for her lie. so she can get more money out of them before she lft sm for good.
What’s wrong with having a side job? She’s not the only one. I don’t really follow kpop, but Seungri has a massive business on the side and that has never been the problem. It’s not as if she has to spend all her time at the store. SM could have been supportive and worked with her, but I guess they weren’t getting a cut and kicked her out when they decided that they don’t need her to be able to generate the same revenue.
Seriously, I don’t understand this Kpop mantra of those looking out for their own interests being called “greedy”. Fans swallow the cult nonsense of “family, town, bond” etc. and act as if the companies are not in it for profit either.
Will any of these same people give up a better paying job, to stay in a crappy one, because of their “bond” to the bad workplace. I doubt it, yet they demand that and more from these idols that choose to step out of the box, by tarring them with the feather of betrayal and greed.
lol Im sitting here laughing at your comments ‘greed for money’?? are you 10? she has a business which is something to fall back on…snsd won’t last forever. They need to have and they have side work… but what happened to her getting kicked out was not cool at all… I’m glad that they’ve decided to end things amicably.
I wonder if her boyfriend has helped her in settling the contract. I read that he has connections…
Amicably? That’s nice.. SM is always so vindictive towards ‘ex’ idols under them. It feels like SM wanted to get rid of her though (going by their prior statement when she was pulled out from SNSD).. if it ended well, it’s good for her, I guess
At least it ended “amicably”. Compared with the EXO boys, Jessica has been training with SM ever since she was, what, 10 years old. I’m really curious though as to why she didn’t mention her group mates in her statements. After being together for so long, the “betrayal” felt on both sides (Jessica & SNSD 8) was probably too much to bear.