IZ*ONE Spotlight: Kim Minjoo (ranked #11 on “Produce48”)

As we a little over a month away for the music debut of global pop group, IZ*ONE (pronounced as “Eyes One”, IZ=12 and 12 members make One), we will spotlight each member.

IZ*ONE is comprised of 12 trainees who competed among 96 trainees from South Korea and Japan (members of AKB48G).

Last time we spotlighted Lee Chae Yeon (ranked #12) of WM Entertainment.

This time we will spotlight one of the visual beauties in the group, Kim Min Joo (Note: Also, spelled Kim Minju or Kim Min Joo) of Urban Works Entertainment.

Kim Min Joo has been with Urban Works as a trainee for over 2.5 years and she and fellow UW talent, Kriesha Chu are really close. In fact, Kriesha posted a dance cover of Minjoo dancing to APink:

Unlike other Korean trainees where they have a strict control of whether or not their trainees can have social media accounts, Kim Minjoo has a Twitter and Instagram account.

She’s a big fan of photography and also “Harry Potter” but along from having a social media presence, Urban Works Entertainment stood by her and promoted her frequently on their YouTube account:

Kim Min Joo’s audition video is here:

Unfortunately, for Kim Minjoo, her first dance in front of the trainers wasn’t satisfactory and she was put on Team D.

While she was in Team D, Miyawaki Sakura who was the first center of “Produce48” saw Kim Minjoo and was impressed by her beauty and selected her to join her I.O.I. team for her first competition (Group Battle).

Unfortunately, despite the team having a lot of talent, they were edged out by the cuteness of Jang Wonyoung’s I.O.I. team, which also had a lot of talent. It was Minjoo’s first loss.

The next competition for Kim Minjoo would be the Position Evaluation and her dance performance for Little Mix’s “Touch” caught the attention of National Producers and show that she had potential but she did make mistakes. But she won the National Producer’s hearts and was voted #1 in her group, which earned her +5000 benefit votes.

Minjoo was in tears and saddened that the person who worked hard to make her look good, the leader Bae Eun-yeong, was ranked #4.

So now it was the Competition Evaluation that she needed to get prepared for! She got the song that she wanted to be part of…unfortunately, she was kicked out of the group. She made a plea to get into the next group, unfortunately they selected another.

So, she ended up joining Miyazaki Miho’s group for Team 1000% and became the center.

She proved herself and in the next elimination round, she was voted #15.

Kim Minjoo was #15 and she needed to get back into the top 12.

One of the things that caught a lot of attention was that Kim Minjoo would visit her subway ads often and meet fans and hopeful National Producers to vote for her. No doubt doing a lot of grassroots marketing and if anything, seeing her kind heart and generosity paid off!

And with the final episode, it was left to the National Producers to see where her fate lies. She had three more performances that night for the finale.