August was already a loaded month before this week started. Stray Kids dropped a new EP, TWICE is quietly going through a structural shift that nobody fully saw coming, BIGBANG just landed an appointment that might be the strangest and most fitting partnership in K-pop history, and the drama landscape finally has something worth talking about after a few quieter weeks. A lot happened. Here's what actually mattered.
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This is K-Entertainment Weekly, going up every Saturday on All About K-Culture — the context international fans usually don't get from a headline alone.
Table of Contents
- What Happened in K-Pop This Week
- What Happened in K-Drama This Week
- K-Entertainment Issue This Week
- Quick Hits
- FAQ
What Happened in K-Pop This Week {#k-pop}
Stray Kids Drop "This & That" — And Break Their Own Record Doing It
Stray Kids released their 10th EP This & That on August 7 at 1 PM KST, and the first-week numbers landed exactly how you'd expect from a group that has been setting records with basically every release for the last three years. According to Hanteo Chart, the EP sold approximately 3.28 million copies in its first week — surpassing the 3.04 million first-week figure set by their previous LP Karma released last year.
The eight-track album is built around themes of confidence and self-direction — choosing freely, pursuing whatever feels right, not being locked into a single path. The title track leans into that: rather than weighing one option against another, the concept is simply "this and that," both at once. It's produced by 3RACHA (Bang Chan, Changbin, HAN) as usual, with co-writing credits shared across a mix of the group's core team and external collaborators including Stefan Johnson and Jordan K. Johnson.
Field Note: The pre-release track "Run It" — which charted in 41 regions on iTunes upon release — set the table well. There's something worth noting about how Stray Kids manage their rollouts: the pre-release does enough work to build anticipation without giving away the album's actual identity. "This & That" as a title track is a different energy from "Run It," and that gap is intentional. Groups that understand pacing at this level are rare.
BIGBANG Is Now Korea's Official Space Ambassadors — And It Actually Makes Sense
This is the one that made me do a double-take at first, but the more you think about it, the more it fits. On August 14, YG Entertainment confirmed that BIGBANG has been appointed as the inaugural honorary ambassadors for the Korea AeroSpace Administration (KASA) — becoming the first artists to represent the agency since its launch in 2024.
BIGBANG will participate in KASA's public engagement campaign, "Dream Capsule," which invites the public to submit messages and aspirations related to space exploration. Those submissions will be converted into code inspired by the 1974 Arecibo Message and loaded onto the fifth launch of South Korea's Nuri rocket. To mark their 20th debut anniversary, the group opened a dedicated microsite on August 14 where fans can leave messages that will literally go to space.
The partnership also carries a layered symbolism that KASA clearly thought through: the name "Big Bang" refers to the origin of the universe, and the group's current 20th-anniversary world tour — BIGBANG 2026–2027 WORLD TOUR <XX: COSMOS> — is built around a cosmic concept. Twenty years of career narrative and the country's space ambitions sharing the same visual language is actually elegant in a way that a lot of corporate-celebrity partnerships never manage to be.
Honestly? I've followed BIGBANG long enough to know they've been through periods where any association with them felt complicated for brands. The fact that KASA, a government-linked agency, chose them as their first-ever ambassadors says something about where the group's cultural standing sits in 2026. It's a statement of rehabilitation as much as it's a PR campaign.
TWICE's Agency Exit Season Continues: Chaeyoung Leaves JYP
On August 13, TWICE member Chaeyoung announced via a handwritten Instagram letter that she is leaving JYP Entertainment after 14 years with the company — including her time as a trainee beginning in 2012. She became the second TWICE member to announce a JYP departure this month, following Jeongyeon's exit earlier in August.
Chaeyoung confirmed she will continue as a full member of TWICE and pursue solo music independently under her "LIL FANTASY" creative banner — the same name as her debut solo album released in September 2025, which appeared on year-end lists from Rolling Stone, Billboard, and Forbes. Jeongyeon, by contrast, signed with Varo Entertainment to pursue acting alongside music. The remaining seven TWICE members — Nayeon, Momo, Sana, Jihyo, Mina, Dahyun, and Tzuyu — have not yet made announcements about their individual contract status.
Real Talk: Two departures in one month from a group that has been housed entirely at JYP since their 2015 debut is genuinely significant — not because it signals the end of TWICE (both members are staying in the group), but because it signals the end of the era where JYP controlled everything under one roof. TWICE is now entering a structure more common in older-generation groups, where individual members operate under different agencies for solo work while maintaining group activities. That complexity doesn't always go smoothly. But TWICE has been together for eleven years. They've earned the benefit of the doubt.
What Happened in K-Drama This Week {#k-drama}
Flex x Cop 2 and Our Sticky Love Both Premiere — Two Very Different Bets
The August drama slate opened with two notable premieres on August 7. Our Sticky Love dropped all episodes at once on Netflix, following Jung Hae-in as a boxing coach whose amnesiac prosecutor girlfriend — played by Ha Young — wakes up with no memory of him. It's a full-drop romantic comedy in the mold Netflix has refined with Korean content, and the amnesia framing gives it enough of a hook to earn passive viewing even when the plot isn't at its sharpest.
Flex x Cop 2 meanwhile returned to SBS, continuing the story of the third-generation chaebol detective Jin Yi-soo (Ahn Bo-hyun) now partnered with veteran detective Joo Hye-ra (Jung Eun-chae). Season 1 built a solid fanbase on the chaebol-fish-out-of-water formula, and the casting of Jung Eun-chae as the new partner shifts the dynamic meaningfully — the first season worked partly because the contrast between Jin Yi-soo and a traditionally experienced cop was the entire joke. Season 2 is betting that the joke still lands.
Behind the Scenes: The timing here is smart from Netflix's perspective. Dropping Our Sticky Love all at once on the same day Flex x Cop 2 premieres on broadcast gives both shows their own lane: one audience binge-watches the Netflix rom-com over a weekend, another tunes in weekly for the SBS procedural. Overlap between those two audiences is minimal, which means neither cannibalizes the other.
K-Entertainment Issue This Week {#issue}
Kim Ji-won's 100 Million KRW Donation — And What It Reflects About the Industry
On the quieter side of this week's news, Kim Ji-won donated 100 million KRW to children with rare diseases, citing her role in the medical drama Doctor X as her motivation. It's the kind of story that gets a brief headline and then disappears — but it's worth holding for a moment, because it reflects a pattern that's become more visible in Korean entertainment over the last two or three years.
An increasing number of K-pop idols and actors have gone public with certifications and skills outside of entertainment — pet care licensing, fitness instruction, insurance consulting — as a hedge against the uncertainty of careers that can end or contract overnight. The charitable giving pattern at the more successful end of the industry runs parallel to that: artists who feel secure are investing outward, whether in community causes or in building their own independent creative structures.
Kim Ji-won donating specifically through the lens of a character she played is also a fairly unusual framing. It says something about how she's thinking about her work — less as performance and more as a form of sustained engagement with the subjects those performances touch.
Worth Noting: 100 million KRW is roughly $73,000 USD. For context, ENHYPEN's Sunoo donated 50 million KRW in June, bringing his total lifetime giving to 200 million KRW. G-Dragon's birthday project this month directed 500 million KRW toward supporting 50 young artists. The scale and consistency of these donations has quietly become part of how Korean entertainment figures build and maintain public standing — it's not just PR, but it's also not entirely separate from it.
Quick Hits: What Else You Should Know {#quick-hits}
- Stray Kids' "Run It" charted on iTunes Top Songs in 41 regions upon pre-release, marking the group's seventh EP with strong international chart performance before the full album even dropped.
- Lee Kang-in (Atletico Madrid winger) signed with Rosé's agency The Black Label this week — another data point in the ongoing merging of Korean sports and entertainment industry structures.
- G-Dragon's birthday project directed 500 million KRW (approximately $353,000 USD) toward supporting 50 young artists.
- NCT is collaborating with Seoul Fashion Week to mark the 10th anniversary of their multi-unit project — details on the scope of the collaboration are still coming.
- Xdinary Heroes' Gunil confirmed his JYP contract was terminated following remarks he made toward sasaeng fans — notably, Gunil clarified the insulting remarks had been directed at privacy-invading fans, not general supporters, but the contract termination stands.
FAQ: K-Entertainment Weekly August 10–16, 2026 {#faq}
Q: How did Stray Kids' "This & That" perform in its first week? A: Released August 7, 2026, This & That sold approximately 3.28 million copies in its first week on Hanteo Chart, surpassing the 3.04 million first-week record set by their previous LP Karma. It's their 10th EP and continues a streak of chart-breaking first-week performances.
Q: Why did Chaeyoung leave JYP Entertainment? A: Chaeyoung's exclusive contract with JYP expired after 14 years, and she announced on August 13 she is pursuing solo music independently under her "LIL FANTASY" creative project. She confirmed her TWICE activities will continue unchanged. She is the second TWICE member to leave JYP this month, after Jeongyeon.
Q: Is TWICE breaking up because members are leaving JYP? A: No. Both Chaeyoung and Jeongyeon have explicitly confirmed they remain full members of TWICE. The departures apply only to their individual solo career management, not to the group. TWICE continues as a nine-member group.
Q: What is BIGBANG's role as KASA ambassadors? A: Appointed on August 14, 2026, BIGBANG became the first honorary ambassadors of the Korea AeroSpace Administration (KASA). They will participate in the "Dream Capsule" public initiative, where submitted fan messages will be encoded and launched on South Korea's Nuri rocket, and assist in promoting Korea's aerospace and space exploration programs publicly.
Q: Where can I watch "Our Sticky Love" and "Flex x Cop 2"? A: Our Sticky Love (starring Jung Hae-in and Ha Young) is streaming on Netflix globally, with all episodes available at once. Flex x Cop 2 airs on SBS in Korea on Fridays and Saturdays at 9:50 PM KST, with international availability varying by streaming platform.
Q: What is Stray Kids' "This & That" about thematically? A: The album is built around confidence and self-direction — the idea of not being forced to choose between one path and another, but embracing both freely. The title track "This & That" reflects that: rather than picking an option, Stray Kids take everything on their own terms. All eight tracks were co-produced by the group's in-house production unit 3RACHA.
Wrapping Up
This was one of those weeks where you needed to follow at least three separate stories simultaneously and somehow none of them stepped on the others. Stray Kids set a sales record, TWICE's future is being quietly restructured one contract at a time, BIGBANG literally sent fan messages to space, and the August drama slate finally has real entries worth watching. That's a full week by any measure.
See you next Saturday. What caught your attention this week? Let me know in the comments.
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