Stray Kids, like other K-pop boy groups, will eventually have to deal with military enlistments. Looking at the members’ ages, Lee Know would presumably be one of the first Korean members to enlist, followed by Changbin and the others.
Obviously, this doesn’t mean Stray Kids will completely disappear. They can still release solo music, do unit activities, and potentially promote with incomplete line-ups. But because several of the members are relatively close in age (many born in 2000), I imagine there will eventually be a period where full-group promotions become much less frequent or non existent unless they promote as 3 or 4.
Before, I didn’t think this would necessarily be a dealbreaker for JYP.
Losing their biggest moneymaker for a period of time would obviously hurt the company, but they still had TWICE as another enormous act to fall back on. JYP would take a hit to revenue and profit, but I assumed TWICE and the rest of the company’s roster could soften that significantly.
However, with more TWICE members pursuing their individual careers through outside agencies while remaining with JYP for group activities, I’m starting to wonder about this more.
And just to be clear: **from TWICE’s perspective, I think this makes complete sense.** The members are at a stage in their careers where they should be able to pursue their own ambitions, choose the companies that suit their individual careers and still reunite for TWICE. As a fan of another group whose members have done something similar, I completely understand why fans and the group are happy about it.
But from **JYP’s business perspective**, the timing is interesting.
Even if TWICE continues as a group, I wouldn’t be surprised if group activities gradually become less frequent as the members devote more time to individual careers.
That matters because, looking at JYP’s current roster, I think there is a pretty enormous gap between **Stray Kids/TWICE and everyone else commercially**.
That isn’t me saying JYP’s other groups are unsuccessful. They aren’t. NMIXX, ITZY, DAY6, KickFlip, NEXZ, Xdinary Heroes, NiziU, etc. all have their own levels of success.
But none of them currently seem close to replacing the amount of business generated by Stray Kids, particularly if you start looking beyond albums and include things such as touring.
For example, this is the 2026 physical-sales tally I have:
Stray Kids — 4,983,647
KickFlip — 468,397
NEXZ — 462,411
NMIXX — 393,988
ITZY — 369,430
NiziU — 202,657
Xdinary Heroes — 183,252
Young K — 182,175
Wonpil — 176,594
TWICE — 122,577
MISAMO — 107,762
Jang Wooyoung — 10,920
DAY6 — 5,764
J.Y. Park — 4,800
JYP TOTAL — 7,674,374
Based on this tally, **Stray Kids alone account for around 64.9% of JYP’s physical sales in 2026 — almost two-thirds of the entire total.**
And TWICE hasn’t had a major Korean group comeback reflected here, so if they did, I imagine the percentage of JYP sales coming from just Stray Kids + TWICE would become even more concentrated.
Physical albums obviously aren’t the same thing as company revenue or profit, but I think they illustrate how unusually large Stray Kids currently are relative to the rest of JYP’s roster.
And if we started looking at **touring revenue**, I suspect the difference could become even more pronounced.
The obvious response is that JYP has several years to grow its younger artists.
But I’m not sure which current act is on a trajectory that would realistically fill that gap.
**ITZY** seem fairly established at their current level and their recent physical sales haven’t shown massive growth.
**NMIXX** are successful and could obviously grow further, although their physical sales have also fallen compared with their previous peaks. I’ve seen people attribute some of that to fewer fansigns, so raw album numbers may not tell the entire story.
**KickFlip** have been increasing their sales from comeback to comeback, which is a good sign. But their growth so far has been fairly gradual. Of course they could suddenly have a breakout song or album — nobody can predict that — but based purely on their current numbers, they’re still extremely far from the level required to compensate for Stray Kids.
**NEXZ** are another group I could see growing significantly, possibly even more than their current numbers suggest. But again, even a large increase wouldn’t necessarily put them anywhere close to Stray Kids’ commercial scale.
And that brings me back to the actual question:
**What does JYP do when Stray Kids eventually enter their enlistment period, especially if TWICE group activities are also becoming less frequent by that point?**
Do they need one of NMIXX/KickFlip/NEXZ to have a huge breakout?
Do they need to debut another group before then?
Could solo and unit activities from Stray Kids themselves generate enough revenue to make the transition much less severe than I’m imagining?
Or am I simply doomposting and JYP is diversified enough that losing regular full-group Stray Kids activities for a couple of years wouldn’t actually be as serious as it looks from the outside?
I’m genuinely curious what people think, particularly anyone who follows JYP’s financials more closely.
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