Five Weeks of Suwon: How a City Cast RESCENE's Liv

On 24 June 2026, the city of Suwon appointed the girl group RESCENE as its ambassadors. Most such appointments end with a photograph and a certificate. This one did not. Over the following five weeks the city’s own YouTube channel, its station concourse, its apartment lobby screens and its baseball park were all turned over, in part, to one member: Liv, who Dailian identified as the member with roots in the city. What follows is a plain accounting of what Suwon made, where it put it and what it said the whole thing was for — with every view figure given as an API reading taken on a single date, and every judgement left to the outlet that made it.

24 June: the appointment, and a video the same day

Suwon appointed RESCENE as the city’s ambassadors on 24 June 2026, Dailian reported. A 홍보대사, or ambassador, is an honorary Korean public-sector role in which a government body recruits a public figure to front its messaging for a set period. Dailian named Liv as the member with roots in the city: she is from Suwon’s Guun-dong and grew up there.

The city did not wait to start using the appointment. On the same day, Suwon’s official YouTube channel — SUWON·수원, a municipal account rather than a label one — published a day-one ambassador video with the group. Read through the YouTube Data API on 27 August 2026, that upload showed 326,411 views, 9,058 likes and 956 comments.

That is the first thing worth noticing about this arrangement. The distribution was the city’s, not the agency’s. Suwon was not being handed promotion; it was producing it.

Late June into July: the municipal channel keeps rolling

The day-one video was not a one-off. Over the following weeks the same city channel kept publishing RESCENE material, much of it in short vertical form — the format YouTube calls Shorts, made for phone screens and quick scrolling.

As read through the YouTube Data API on 27 August 2026, that run included:

• a short published on 25 June, with 91,754 views;
• a comment-reading video published on 30 June about the nickname the city had given Liv, with 93,323 views;
• an item published on 10 July, with 11,773 views.

Each of these is municipal output. The production hours, the channel slot and the posting schedule belonged to Suwon. For a city that had just declared a tourism year, the ambassadorship was being spent rather than framed — the member was being cast in things, week after week, instead of appearing once at a ceremony.

17 July: Liv on the nickname, in her own words

The nickname thread that the city channel had picked up on 30 June surfaced again in the entertainment press. On 17 July 2026, an episode of the YouTube programme ‘술 빚는 윤주모’ was published featuring Liv alongside bandmates Minami and Zena.

MyDaily reported her remarks, and headlined them with her own quoted phrase — 별명 ‘수원 왕발가락’ — the nickname Suwon had given her. In her own words, she has come to accept it: ‘이제는 별명을 받아들이고 매일 저녁마다 발가락에게 고생했다며 칭찬 한 번씩을 건넨다’ — that she now thanks her toes each evening for their hard work. She added that she has been buying toe socks: ‘최근에는 발가락 양말도 구매하고 있다.’

The detail matters here only for one reason. A city-coined running joke had travelled far enough from the municipal channel to become an interview topic in national entertainment media within three weeks of the appointment.

21 July: the first pitch at KT Wiz Park

On 21 July 2026, the campaign moved from the phone screen to the ballpark. MK Sports placed and dated it precisely: that afternoon at KT Wiz Park in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province, the 2026 Shinhan SOL KBO League fixture between the Doosan Bears and the KT Wiz. Before the game, Liv threw the 시구 and May took the 시타.

For readers outside Korea: 시구 is the ceremonial first pitch, and 시타 is its companion, a ceremonial first swing of the bat taken at the plate. Both are standard pre-game guest slots in the KBO League, Korea’s top professional baseball competition.

SBS News covered the appearance the same day, describing RESCENE as ‘요즘 폭발적인 인기의 아이돌 그룹’ — an idol group of explosive popularity at the moment, in the broadcaster’s words — and noting that the occasion carried extra meaning for Liv, a baseball fan whose hometown is Suwon: ‘야구팬 리브에게는 더욱 뜻깊은 시간이었겠네요.’

The venue is the city’s own sporting stage. The ambassadorship had reached it inside a month.

30 July: an entertainment-format film for the Visit Year

On 30 July 2026, Suwon released the centrepiece. OhmyNews gives the title as ‘리브의 수원: 리브가 콕 찝은 찐 수원 목록’ — Liv’s Suwon: the real Suwon list Liv picked out. A second rendering exists: eDaily refers to the same 30 July release as ‘리브 Pick! 수원 필수코스’. Both outlets published on the same day and describe the same Visit Year video; we use OhmyNews’s title and note the divergence rather than choosing silently.

OhmyNews reports the film was made in the format of an entertainment programme rather than a conventional local-government promotional film — ‘예능 프로그램 형식으로 제작됐다’ — with Liv presenting a ‘1분 빠른 퀴즈’, a one-minute quick quiz, that introduces the city’s foods, sights and festivals. Incheon Ilbo describes the content as Suwon’s representative foods, tourist sites, activities and festivals. eDaily lists specifics: Suwon tongdak and Suwon galbi, the Banghwasuryujeong pavilion, the Flying Suwon attraction, the Suwon Hwaseong Cultural Festival and the King Jeongjo royal procession.

The distribution is the part that shows what the city put in. Per OhmyNews, the film runs on Suwon’s official YouTube channel and social accounts, at Suwon Station, on sports-venue display screens, on apartment digital notice boards — DID panels, the lobby screens common in Korean apartment complexes — and in the city newsletter. The city’s festival calendar supplies the content; the city’s own physical and digital estate supplies the reach.

One limit on this account: the film’s release on the city’s channels is reported by the press, and no view count is given for it here, because a check of the Suwon channel’s most recent thirty uploads on 27 August 2026 did not turn up a long-form video under either title.

What the five weeks add up to, and what the city says it is for

Around the same release window, the city channel kept producing. Read through the YouTube Data API on 27 August 2026, a short published on 29 July introducing the Suwon essentials course showed 124,176 views, and a three-minute ballpark video with Liv and May published on 30 July showed 48,809 views and 1,205 comments.

Taken together, the six municipal uploads counted in this article — 24 June, 25 June, 30 June, 10 July, 29 July and 30 July — total 696,246 views as read on 27 August 2026. That figure is a sum of API readings taken on a single date, not a running or verified total.

As for purpose, the city has said it twice, in near-identical terms. Speaking to OhmyNews, an official framed the 30 July film as a beginning: ‘이번 영상을 시작으로 리센느와 함께 다양한 콘텐츠를 선보일 예정’ — that starting with this video, the city plans to present various content with RESCENE. To eDaily, an official extended the same line to the 2026–2027 Suwon Visit Year, major festivals, tourism resources and social media. And to Incheon Ilbo, an official set the measure: ‘수원의 도시 브랜드를 널리 알리고 실제 방문으로 이어질 수 있는 홍보를 지속적으로 추진하겠다’ — that the city would keep running promotion that spreads its city brand and converts into actual visits.

That is the shape of the arrangement from Suwon’s side. The ambassadorship was not an honour conferred and filed away. It was a production commitment: a channel schedule, a station concourse, a set of lobby screens, a KBO pre-game slot and a festival list, all built around a member the city could credibly call its own.

Key takeaways

• Suwon appointed RESCENE as the city’s ambassadors on 24 June 2026 (Dailian), and published a day-one video with the group on its own YouTube channel the same day.
• Read through the YouTube Data API on 27 August 2026, that day-one upload showed 326,411 views, 9,058 likes and 956 comments; six municipal uploads counted here totalled 696,246 views on that date.
• On 21 July 2026, Liv threw the ceremonial first pitch and May took the ceremonial bat swing before the Doosan Bears–KT Wiz KBO League game at KT Wiz Park in Suwon (SBS News, MK Sports).
• On 30 July 2026 the city released a promotional film for the 2026–2027 Suwon Visit Year, made in an entertainment-programme format according to OhmyNews, and distributed via the city’s channels, Suwon Station, sports-venue screens, apartment digital notice boards and the city newsletter.
• Two outlets render the film’s title differently: OhmyNews as ‘리브의 수원: 리브가 콕 찝은 찐 수원 목록’, eDaily as ‘리브 Pick! 수원 필수코스’.
• City officials told OhmyNews and eDaily the film is the start of a series tied to the Visit Year, major festivals, tourism resources and social media.