Why is Zena called a Silla princess? Gyeongju made it official

In a botanical garden called Rawon, in the Bomun-dong district of Gyeongju, five members of the girl group RESCENE put on traditional Korean dress and walked in a reenacted procession from the Silla era, accompanied by the Silla court-music troupe. At the end of it, they were handed certificates naming them honorary Silla princesses. Seoul Shinmun reported the shoot on 3 August 2026, describing it as the group’s first official activity since Gyeongju appointed them as its tourism ambassadors.

For one member, the title was not new. Zena is from Gyeongju, and fans had already been calling her 신라공주 — Silla princess — for weeks before any city official signed anything. What follows is the order in which a piece of fan vocabulary turned into municipal paperwork, and then into video on a city government’s own channel.

The nickname came first

On 10 June 2026, Hanteo News — a Korean music-industry outlet attached to the Hanteo album-sales chart — reported that Zena had picked up the nickname 신라공주 after it became known that she is from Gyeongju. That was 19 days before the city announced anything. The name was circulating among fans on its own terms.

SBS News, reporting the later appointment, traced the nickname to the Gyeongsang-dialect content Zena makes on Woni’s channel. Gyeongsang is the southeastern region of Korea that contains Gyeongju, and its dialect has a distinct intonation that Korean listeners recognise instantly — the kind of detail that becomes a running character note in variety-style video content.

So the sequence is unusually clean. A regional accent became a persona in short-form video; the persona became a nickname; the nickname attached itself to a real city with a real tourism budget. Everything after 10 June is institutions catching up with something fans had already decided to call her.

What Silla is, and why Gyeongju sells it

SBS News notes that Gyeongju was the capital of the Silla kingdom. Silla was one of the ancient Korean states, and Gyeongju held its capital for centuries — which is why the modern city of roughly a quarter-million people is built around and among the remains of that period. For a domestic tourism market, Silla is Gyeongju’s single strongest brand asset, the thing no other Korean city can claim.

That explains why the certificate said what it said. A generic goodwill title would have been forgettable; 명예 신라공주증, an honorary Silla princess certificate, folds the city’s historical identity and a fan-made nickname into one object.

On 29 June 2026, Gyeongju appointed RESCENE as its tourism ambassadors, citing Zena’s hometown connection, according to SBS News. In Korea, a 홍보대사 — literally an ambassador — is a formal, usually unpaid or nominally paid appointment by a government body, university or campaign, carrying a ceremony, a term of service and an expectation of promotional appearances. It is a common instrument of local government communication, and it is the mechanism by which a city can put a group’s schedule and a city’s landmarks in the same frame.

What the shoot actually consisted of

Seoul Shinmun’s 3 August report gives the components. The location was Rawon, a botanical garden in Bomun-dong — the Bomun area is Gyeongju’s resort and tourism district. The members wore 전통 복식, traditional dress. They reenacted a Silla-era procession together with the 신라고취대, the Silla court-music troupe, a municipal performance ensemble that plays period wind and percussion music. Then came the presentation of the honorary Silla princess certificates.

The outlet also states plainly what the day was for: the photographs and footage were produced as 숏폼 short-form video and 롱폼 long-form video, for release on Gyeongju’s official social media channels. In other words, the ceremony was the content. There was no separate press conference to report on; the deliverable was the edit.

Gyeongju mayor Ju Nak-young said of the day: ‘촬영한 사진과 영상이 리센느 팬들에게도 경주의 새로운 매력을 알리는 기회가 되길 바란다’ — that he hoped the photos and video shot there would also become an opportunity to show RESCENE’s fans a new side of Gyeongju’s appeal.

The rollout, and the numbers on the city’s channel

The city delivered in the order Seoul Shinmun had described. On 8 August 2026, the official 경주시 Gyeongjucity YouTube channel published a 51-second short-form cut from the Rawon shoot. On 18 August 2026 came the long-form version, titled ‘경주에 누가 돌아왔게~!👑 신라 공주 리센느가 돌아왔지💗’, running 5 minutes and 6 seconds. A further short followed on 24 August 2026.

As read through the YouTube Data API on 27 August 2026, the figures stood as follows:

• 8 August short-form cut: 712,039 views and 14,762 likes
• 18 August long-form video: 105,316 views and 8,086 likes
• 24 August short: 21,076 views

These are single readings taken on one date and they move; they are recorded here as of 27 August 2026. What they show is a municipal channel — the kind of account that normally posts civic notices — carrying a six-figure short-form view count from a shoot it commissioned itself.

What the city gets out of having produced her

The other half of the exchange is visible a short drive from Bomun-dong. On 4 August 2026, Daegu Ilbo published a field report from Premium Dance Studio in Gyeongju, the dance academy where Zena learned the basics, which its reporter visited on 29 July 2026.

The academy’s director, Ahn Jeong-eun, told the paper that Zena came to the academy in 2020 as an elementary school sixth-grader, on her mother’s suggestion, at a time when COVID-19 was keeping her at home, and that she built confidence as she learned. When Daegu Ilbo visited, the academy’s cover-dance team — PDS Crew, a group that learns and performs existing K-pop choreography — was practising RESCENE’s ‘LOVE ATTACK’.

Students there raised a practical point with the reporter: for young people in Gyeongju who want to become idols, travelling to Seoul for auditions is a burden, KTX high-speed rail fares included. That is the local stake underneath the certificate. A city that can point to someone who trained in its own studios and is now filmed in its own botanical garden is making an argument to the students still in the practice room — which is roughly what the headline on Daegu Ilbo’s piece, quoting an aspiration to become ‘the second Silla princess’, already says.

Key takeaways

• Hanteo News reported on 10 June 2026 that fans had already nicknamed Zena ‘신라공주’ (Silla princess) after it became known she is from Gyeongju — 19 days before the city’s appointment.
• SBS News reports the nickname grew out of the Gyeongsang-dialect content Zena makes on Woni’s channel, and notes that Gyeongju was the capital of the Silla kingdom.
• On 29 June 2026 Gyeongju appointed RESCENE as its tourism ambassadors, citing Zena’s hometown ties.
• Seoul Shinmun reported on 3 August 2026 that the group’s first official activity was a shoot at the Rawon botanical garden in Bomun-dong, where they wore traditional dress, reenacted a Silla-era procession with the Silla court-music troupe and received honorary Silla princess certificates.
• Gyeongju City’s official YouTube channel released a 51-second short on 8 August 2026, the 5-minute-6-second long-form video on 18 August 2026 and another short on 24 August 2026; API readings on 27 August 2026 showed 712,039, 105,316 and 21,076 views respectively.
• Daegu Ilbo visited Premium Dance Studio in Gyeongju on 29 July 2026, where director Ahn Jeong-eun described Zena’s start in 2020 and students described the cost of travelling to Seoul for auditions.