AOA′s Kim Seolhyun won the Model of the Year at the Seoul TV CF Awards. The ceremony took place at Seoul's City Hall on January 14.
The award is determined by votes from the public and advertisers. Previous winners included Jun Ji Hyun, Kim Tae Hee, Shin Min Ah and Kim Soo Hyun.
The singer-actress has seen a significant boost in her popularity during the last year. She also made the list of most searched kpop idols during 2015 on the search engine Naver. Her acting roles may have something to do with that. As well as performing music with AOA, Seolhyun attracted attention for her film and drama roles. She played Lee Min Ho's little sister in the film "Gangnam Blues" and played a vampire high school student in love with Yeo Jin Goo in the drama "Orange Marmalade."
Because of her high visibility the actress was selected to be an ambassador for The Year of Visit Korea, 2016-2018, which was organized by the Seoul Visit Korea Committee. She serves as an ambassador alongside her film co-star Lee Min Ho.
Seolhyun signed plenty of endorsement deals this year. With her fellow AOA members and on her own she has modeled for clothes, games, chicken and cosmetics. Seolhyun modeled jeans for Buckaroo. The brand even released jeans named after Seolhyun. And one of her modeling jobs generated a quirky craze. When SK Telecom used her as their spokesperson, they displayed her image in cardboard cutouts. But stores had a hard time holding on to those cutouts because they were frequently stolen.
Seolhyun modeled even before debuting with AOA. She was discovered by FNC Entertainment when she won the 8th Smart Model Contest.
Altogether AOA had the most number of commercials of any female idol group in 2015. The entire group models for SPAO in Hong Kong and Chicken Mania. Choa modeled for NBA, Choa, Chanmi, Jimin, Yuna, Hyejeong and Mina did ads for Line.
Seolhyun's acting career shows no signs of slowing down. Her next role will be in the film "Murderer's Guide To Memorization," with co-stars Kim Nam Gil and Sol Kyung Gu. She will play a murderer's daughter.
