Credits: Maps, Photography YANG JOONGSAN, produced by PARK SEOHA, Styling DOOOHO, Hair RYU DONGHO, Make-up JO HYEME, Dayoung / Starship Entertainment
Dayoung is rewriting the K-pop summer rulebook — one honest lyric, one scorching stage, one breathtaking frame at a time
She walked onto the summer stage with nothing to prove — and that’s exactly how she proved everything.
There’s a moment in WJSN Dayoung’s MAPS Korea & Japan Summer 2026 pictorial where she’s staring straight into the lens, leopard-print bucket hat tilted at a careless angle, crop tee grazed by afternoon light, pleated skirt caught mid-swirl like the tail end of a dance. The look is kitschy, cool, effortlessly contradictory — and the expression on her face says she knows it. This is Im Da-young at 26: a decade into her K-pop journey, finally, gloriously, on her own terms.
The Vol. 198 Summer Issue preview shoot isn’t just a fashion spread. It’s a visual declaration. After a 2025 that catapulted Dayoung from beloved WJSN member to globally recognized solo force, this MAPS collaboration is the editorial punctuation mark on a sentence that’s still being written.
A Decade of Cosmic Currency
Born in Jeju on May 14, 1999, Im Da-young joined WJSN in December 2015 as part of the Wonder Unit, debuting with the full group on February 25, 2016. She was 16. K-pop was entering one of the most competitive eras in its history, and WJSN — with their dreamy, space-infused sonic identity — were carving out a galaxy all their own.
Across ten years and a constellation of releases, Dayoung built a reputation as the group’s livewire energy: kinetic on stage, warm and disarming off it, with a husky vocal timbre that could cut through a crowd like a spotlight finding its mark. She also became a founding member of WJSN’s beloved subunit WJSN Chocome alongside Soobin, Luda, and Yeoreum, a unit that let her lean into her natural playfulness and cartoon-bright charisma.
But the full story isn’t without shadow. In April 2021, Starship Entertainment announced that Dayoung would be taking a break from all activities due to a severe autoimmune disease. For an idol whose currency is presence — on stage, on screen, in the room — that kind of absence is both public and deeply private. What she brought back with her when she returned was something richer than performance. It was perspective.
She came back from the edge with something richer than skill — she came back with a story only she could tell.— MAPS Editorial, Summer 2026
2025: The Year Body Broke Everything
On September 9, 2025, Dayoung launched her solo career with the digital single “Gonna Love Me, Right?” under Starship Entertainment, featuring three tracks: title song “Body,” along with “number one rockstar” and “marry me.” Nobody was quite prepared for what happened next.
“Body” hit as high as No. 9 on Melon’s TOP100 shortly after release and entered the top 20 on the weekly chart in mid-October.
It earned a No. 1 trophy on a music show, and its popularity exploded through short-form platforms like TikTok and YouTube Shorts, helping it transition from a fandom favourite to a mainstream hit.
The critical reception was equally electric. British music magazine NME named “Body” to its 25 Best K-pop Songs of 2025 list, describing it as “a captivating summer pop song that sparkles like sunlight at sunset” and praising Dayoung’s “infectious passion for the stage combined with the track’s addictive hook.”
Billboard included it in its own “25 Best K-pop Songs of 2025: Staff Picks,” and The Hollywood Reporter called it one of the most unexpected hit songs of the year, noting that it “demonstrates just how powerful the result can be when an artist fully understands what suits them.” She also won Best Solo Artist (Female) at the 2025 Korea Grand Music Awards, and Teen Vogue selected the “Body” music video as one of the Best K-pop Music Videos of 2025. For a solo debut, it was not just a strong first step — it was a full sprint.
Fashion As First Language
Flip through the MAPS Summer 2026 frames and what strikes you first is the refusal to choose a single self. In the pictorial, Dayoung perfectly executed the leopard-pattern bucket hat, crop T-shirt, and pleated skirt, releasing a kitschy mood with a free attitude — the unique lovely and lively energy layered over a rough and playful punk mood, naturally completing an opposite charm.
This is Dayoung’s fashion philosophy in miniature: contradictions worn with conviction. Not the studied rebellion of someone performing edge, but the genuine ease of someone who has simply stopped editing herself. The bleached hair. The wet-hair styling. The mix of retro Y2K silhouettes and modern athleticism. Each look tells the same story — I got here by being exactly this.
Across her solo comeback performances, Dayoung has consistently drawn attention with bold and colorful styling, completing the concept of the stage in three dimensions — ranging from casual to sporty and retro mood — with the signature bleached hair wet hair style doubling its rough charm.
Dayoung doesn’t wear a concept. She inhabits it — fully, fearlessly, with the casual authority of someone who’s always known she belonged at the centre of the frame.
April 2026: What’s a Girl To Do
On April 7, 2026, Dayoung released her second digital single “What’s a Girl to Do” — a two-song project featuring the title track and B-side “Priceless (kaching kaching),” serving as a follow-up to her solo debut and marking her first comeback as a solo artist during WJSN’s 10th anniversary year.
The title track is a combination of Dayoung’s unique husky vocals on a danceable beat — lyrics that capture honest feelings when you like someone, with a densely composed performance featuring trendy and catchy movements. It’s a gentler sonic turn from “Body,” trading summer-saturated energy for something more intimate and R&B-inflected, without ever losing her signature propulsive presence.
The music video features Shiloh Jolie as a backup dancer, credited as “Shi,” who secured the role through an open audition conducted in the United States, competing alongside members of the Culture dance crew. Starship Entertainment confirmed they discovered her identity only after filming concluded, with the selection based solely on performance merit. The detail felt perfectly Dayoung — talent-first, spectacle second.
The visual production deliberately avoided CGI effects, prioritising grounded aesthetics over digital enhancements, with styling incorporating early-2000s influences reminiscent of Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera. It’s nostalgia worn like armour: warm, knowing, and unafraid.
The Universe She Belongs To
On February 25, 2026, WJSN released the digital single “Bloom Hour” to celebrate their tenth anniversary. A decade. For an industry that moves at light speed, ten years is practically cosmological. And Dayoung has been there for every orbit — from the earliest space-themed dream-pop to the sharp, evolving sound of the group’s present chapter.
What makes her 2026 story resonate so deeply with Ujungs — the fandom name for WJSN’s devoted global following — and newcomers alike is the continuity beneath the transformation. She never abandoned who she was to become who she is. The Jeju girl who competed on K-Pop Star at 12 years old, who trained and debuted and fought through illness and came back swinging — that person is still visible in every stage performance, every fashion spread, every honest lyric she writes for herself.
Dayoung is set to take the stage at WATERBOMB SEOUL 2026 for the first time since her debut, scheduled to appear on July 26 at KINTEX Outdoor Global Stage — expected to showcase her signature healthy and energetic live vocals along with powerful performances, setting her sights on becoming a new summer queen.
This MAPS Summer Issue pictorial is the visual companion to that arc. It captures Dayoung in the exact space between what she’s built and what she’s becoming — sun-drenched and sure of herself, kitschy and cosmic, playful and precise. It’s the cover she earned by refusing to be anything less than entirely, unapologetically herself.
The summer queen isn’t crowned. She arrives.
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