South Korea's presidential office said Tuesday it has opened a Twitter account, @BluehouseKorea, as part of efforts to improve communication with tech-savvy younger generation, a move that had been long delayed due to the security risks of the popular micro-blogging service.
Cheong Wa Dae's joining of the Twitter service comes after the shocking defeat of the ruling Grand National Party in local elections last week against the backdrop of an Internet- and Twitter-driven wave of ballots among young voters.
Lawmakers at the conservative party said they should have made more efforts to communicate with the youth through either cyberspace or smart phones.
"Cheong Wa Dae begins Twitter," its online spokesman Lee Kil-ho said. "We will do our best to make the president and netizens better exchange their messages."
Twitter enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the writer's profile page and delivered to the writer's subscribers, who are known as followers.
Cheong Wa Dae's Twitter account has drawn nearly 3,000 followers as of Tuesday afternoon, less than a day after its launch.
In February, Cheong Wa Dae opened an account on me2DAY, a local micro-blogging social networking service (SNS) by NHN Corp. that can be accessed at http://me2day.net/theBlueHouse, and a mobile site for smart phone users, http://m.president.go.kr.
Presidential officials said the use of Twitter had been delayed due to worries of information leakage and hacking, especially since it is a foreign service, while me2Day is a domestic service with which it is relatively easy to counter security threats.
Chong Wa Dae recently set up an internal system to foil such an online attack, they added.//Yonhap
Cheong Wa Dae's joining of the Twitter service comes after the shocking defeat of the ruling Grand National Party in local elections last week against the backdrop of an Internet- and Twitter-driven wave of ballots among young voters.
Lawmakers at the conservative party said they should have made more efforts to communicate with the youth through either cyberspace or smart phones.
"Cheong Wa Dae begins Twitter," its online spokesman Lee Kil-ho said. "We will do our best to make the president and netizens better exchange their messages."
Twitter enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the writer's profile page and delivered to the writer's subscribers, who are known as followers.
Cheong Wa Dae's Twitter account has drawn nearly 3,000 followers as of Tuesday afternoon, less than a day after its launch.
In February, Cheong Wa Dae opened an account on me2DAY, a local micro-blogging social networking service (SNS) by NHN Corp. that can be accessed at http://me2day.net/theBlueHouse, and a mobile site for smart phone users, http://m.president.go.kr.
Presidential officials said the use of Twitter had been delayed due to worries of information leakage and hacking, especially since it is a foreign service, while me2Day is a domestic service with which it is relatively easy to counter security threats.
Chong Wa Dae recently set up an internal system to foil such an online attack, they added.//Yonhap
reporter
Park Sae-jin
swatchsjp@ajunews.com
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