Karina카리나

Karina (카리나; real name Yu Ji-min, 유지민) is a South Korean singer, rapper and dancer, born on April 11, 2000, and the leader of aespa, the girl group formed by SM Entertainment. SM revealed her as the group's second member on October 27, 2020, and aespa debuted on November 17, 2020 with the digital single "Black Mamba".¹ On December 17, 2021 she was announced as a member of SM's supergroup Got the Beat, which debuted in January 2022.¹

Her solo breakthrough came in 2024 with "UP", from aespa's digital single album Synk: Parallel Line: Wikipedia credits it as her first top-ten song as a solo artist on the Circle Digital Chart and her first solo music show award, from Show! Music Core.¹ In Circle Chart's 2025 year-end digital chart, as reported by Soompi, "UP (KARINA Solo)" is listed with a score of 268,381,613, a total Circle calculates from weighted streaming, downloads and related sales through 2025.²

DabPop's tables also record her commercial roles. Its list of K-pop idols who are luxury brand ambassadors has Prada naming her global brand ambassador from August 2024, a date Wikipedia credits to L'Officiel Philippines.³ In Korean Celebrity Ad Films on YouTube she appears in two films on her own: Kwangdong Pharmaceutical named her its Vita500 ZERO model on April 11, 2024, with the film going up on April 14 and standing at 12.26 million views on October 24, 2026, and Google Play Korea's "PLAY ON PLAY" series with the pro gamer Faker was released on May 15, 2026. She also appears with aespa in Nongshim's Shin Ramyun ad film.⁴