IU
이지은- Name
- Lee Ji-eun
- Born
- 16 May 1993
Debuted at 15 and has written and produced her own albums since Chat-Shire in 2015.
Their story
A ballad at fifteen
Lee Ji-eun signed with LOEN Entertainment as a young teenager and took the stage name IU. She was 15 when she first sang "Lost Child" on Mnet's M Countdown, a ballad from the EP Lost and Found. The man who managed her from that first stage, Bae Jong-han, never left. When he founded EDAM Entertainment, she signed with his new company.
Three high notes
The turn came in 2010. A duet with Seulong of 2AM, "Nagging", brought her first music show wins, and a few months later "Good Day" made her famous across Korea. The song climbs to a run of high notes near the end. She once admitted that fans wait for them at every show and that she feels the pressure. Last Fantasy and "You & I" came next, and the drama Dream High opened a second career in acting.
Writing her own songs
With Chat-Shire in 2015 she produced an album herself for the first time. Its single "Twenty-Three" was about growing up, far from the "nation's little sister" label of her teens. "Palette" picked up that thread, with G-Dragon handing out advice in his verse. Between the originals she keeps going back to older Korean songs on the A Flower Bookmark remake albums. The ballads still win the big prizes: "Through the Night" and "Blueming" both took the Golden Disc grand prize.
Where she is now
Her last world tour, HEREH, ended at Seoul World Cup Stadium with her 100th solo concert. Since then she has split her time between music and drama. When Life Gives You Tangerines brought her a Blue Dragon prize for Best Actress, and in the spring of 2026 she led the MBC drama Perfect Crown. In the summer a stadium concert in Goyang was called off and the next studio album moved back. She returned anyway, with the digital single Unknown Planet, released a year to the day after "Bye, Summer".