MOMOLAND members Jane and Ahin have opened up about the gap between chart success and personal income, saying that even as their music videos piled up views, they were carrying heavy debt. The pair discussed their earnings in a new episode of the YouTube talk show Chaorum, reported by TenAsia and Xports News on October 30.
The episode, Chaorum EP.45 with Jane and Ahin, revisits the group’s peak years through the lens of its two signature hits, Bboom Bboom and BAAM. Host Chaorum noted that the two music videos together have passed one billion views, a figure the members accepted as roughly right. The conversation then turned to what that level of exposure actually paid, and the answer, in the members’ own telling, was far less straightforward than the view counts suggest.
Asked about the group’s busy schedule at its peak, Jane and Ahin said plainly that they had a lot of debt. They were quick to add a clarification that matters to the story: they did not end their first run without any settlement at all. They did receive money, they said, but the balance sheet behind the fame was still negative. That distinction, that a group can be both commercially successful and personally in debt, is the heart of the interview.
The timing, they explained, made the situation worse. Just as they began to receive their first settlement, the COVID-19 pandemic spread and work dried up sharply. Events, a crucial income stream for a group whose strength lay heavily in live stages and overseas appearances, fell away. The members said their earnings went back into the negative after that first settlement, and that they finished their original run in the same position. For a group that performed strongly abroad, the loss of overseas dates was especially damaging, they said.
The interview did not put a specific won figure on the debt or on any individual settlement, and no such figure should be read into the members’ account. What they described was a structure, not a single number: high costs carried forward from the trainee and debut years, shared expenses across a group, and income that only arrives once those costs are cleared. That structure was already familiar to viewers because the show’s host raised leader Hyebin’s July video explaining idol settlement, in which she laid out how trainee costs, music video production and other expenses are billed back after debut.
Host Chaorum added her own experience to the conversation, recalling that she had faced disbelief when she previously said on television that she had not received settlement. Jane and Ahin said they understood that reaction, explaining that they, too, had not talked openly about money during their active years. The exchange gives the episode a wider frame than one group’s story: several former idols have used the same show to describe settlements that arrived late, or not at all, despite busy schedules.
The members also looked back at how MOMOLAND’s sound changed on the way to that peak. Their debut concept, they said, was not the punchy, high-energy style most fans remember, but a brighter, fairy-tale style built around an amusement park theme. The shift came after JooE’s high-energy fancam drew attention, pushing the group’s stages and music in a livelier direction. Bboom Bboom itself, they recalled, was hard to grasp at first listen from its guide version, and the process of learning it even moved some members to tears, before the song went on to exceed their expectations.
That history is important context for the debt discussion, because the group’s breakthrough did not arrive overnight. MOMOLAND debuted in 2016 and built its name on addictive hits including Bboom Bboom, BAAM and I’m So Hot. The group that recorded those songs eventually numbered six members, Hyebin, Jane, Nayun, JooE, Ahin and Nancy, after earlier lineup changes. When their contracts with MLD Entertainment expired in January 2023, the members chose not to renew, and the group entered a hiatus.
Jane and Ahin said the members stayed in touch through that blank period, meeting on anniversaries and taking photos together, even while their group activities were paused. The idea of returning to one company together took shape while they were preparing a fan meeting, they said, and the members reached a shared decision to keep going as a team despite honest worries about whether they could pull it off. They thanked fans who waited for them, a note that closes the interview on the reunion rather than on the debt.
The group has since resumed activities as a six-member act under a new agency, and Jane has also stepped out with solo work in 2026, including her self-written single A Door of Light.
