Twitter's temptation continues in South Korea

SEOUL, Oct. 20 (Yonhap) -- When superstar South Korean figure skater Kim Yu-na
ended her three-year partnership with her Canadian coach, Brian Orser, in August,
she had a few choice words for him on Twitter.
With Orser making public claims that he had been treated disrespectfully and that
Kim herself had been kept in the dark about letting him go, she responded
tersely, "Stop lying, B. I know exactly what's going on. This was my decision."
As shocking as the message was to Koreans, many of whom had idolized the pair, it
was just another example of the short-message social network's growing might in
South Korea.
Though Kim uses her own Twitter account sparingly, she is one of an exploding
number of Koreans to have embraced the social platform over the course of the
last year.
According to the Twitter Korea Index, the number of Korean Twitter users jumped
from 127,000 in January to more than 1.8 million today. Twitter has even
surpassed Facebook in Korea, where it has 1.58 million users. Worldwide, Twitter
claims around 150 million users to Facebook's 500 million-plus.
The turning point for Twitter, as it has been for much else in Korea, was the
arrival of Apple's iPhone late last year.
"The iPhone really changed things," said Benjamin Kim, CEO of the social media
start-up Cizion. "As iPhone sales took off, Twitter use jumped and Twitter users
quickly found themselves becoming opinion leaders."
Another thing that propelled Twitter's adoption, Kim said, was Korea's
enthusiastic adoption of Wi-Fi, a wireless Internet connection system for
laptops. Today, Seoul alone has more than 3,000 Wi-Fi zones spread around the
city.
But these same conditions were also present for Facebook, which after healthy
growth from around 700,000 users in May to more than 1.6 million in September,
dropped back to 1.47 million at the beginning of October before recovering to its
current level.
So why the disparity?
"I guess Koreans are tired of closed social network sites such as Cyworld," Ph.D.
student and devout "tweeter" Ryu Dong-hyup said, referring to a hugely popular
Korean social network site with many similarities to Facebook. "Twitter allows us
to connect easily with other people who might share the same interests. But
Facebook is just the same old network of friends exchanging trivial personal
happenings."
Many others agree.
"Facebook seems somewhat static and conservative in comparison with Twitter,"
said Won Yong-jin, a professor of communication studies at Sogang University in
Seoul. "Early adopters consist of younger users in Korea, and they enjoy the more
dynamic aspects of online culture."
Twitter's freewheeling image in Korea has another source: The service is not
subject to Korea's "real-name system," which compels netizens to provide their
names and resident registration numbers if they want to leave comments or upload
content onto Web sites. As a result, in common with much of the rest of the
world, Koreans need only to create a user name, add an e-mail address, and
they're ready to tweet.
But in a country where netizens have an often fearsome reputation, and with many
Koreans joining Twitter to escape the watchful eye of the government, Twitter's
easy-going enrollment might seem the perfect enticement for angry or loose-lipped
commenters to hide behind a cloak of anonymity.
Not so, said Cizion's Kim.
"Koreans see famous people using their real pictures and names, and feel they
should do it, too," said Kim. "They want to build up a social reputation through
Twitter, and using your real picture and name is the best way to do that. As a
result, the tone of comments tends to be more polite than on traditional message
boards, and politicians and leaders feel more comfortable using it."
In addition, Kim said, though purported access to the rich and famous is a big
pull for Twitter users everywhere, the notion of more open communication is
particularly enticing to Koreans.
"Korea remains a very hierarchical society, and that can make communication
difficult, especially for junior staff," he said. "Twitter has really opened
things up in that regard, and as a result, it is widely used as a source of news
or information by junior staff as well as CEOs and politicians."
Examples abound in Korea of captains of industry and top politicians airing their
supposedly personal thoughts or comings and goings on Twitter.
Progressive-leaning politicians, who enjoy higher rates of support among the
young, tend to have many followers; Rhyu Si-min (@u_simin), a top leader of the
minor opposition People's Participation Party, claims more than 114,000.
And belying their often stuffy image, corporate bosses sometimes adopt much more
approachable personas on Twitter. Doosan Corporation CEO Park Yong-maan
(@Solarplant) frequently regales his almost 80,000 followers with personal
anecdotes, jokes or words of encouragement.
Professor Won, however, is skeptical.
"I don't think Twitter breaks down real barriers," he said. "Instead, it makes us
recognize once again that communication between those with power and those
without rarely happens. Whenever politicians appear online, most Twitter people
ask them if they tweet for themselves (or if their staff does it). People just
don't believe those with power."
Earlier this year, an account by a user calling himself "President Lee," complete
with pictures of Korean President Lee Myung-bak and links to the official Web
site of the presidential residence, gained several hundred followers before being
exposed as a fake.
Though no real harm was done, numerous other fake accounts have popped up in
Korea. And this problem, says Cizion's Kim, is certain to grow worse as Twitter
gains ever more followers.
Also, in a country where sometimes far-fetched online chatter has fueled major
controversies, some have serious concerns about Twitter's negative impact, such
as the spread of malicious, unsubstantiated rumors.
So far, however, many controversies have arisen from things stars actually did
say on Twitter. In one such case, comedienne Kim Mi-hwa caused a major stir in
July when she claimed that she had been blacklisted by Korea's main broadcaster
KBS because of her left-wing political views.
More recently, a long-running dispute surrounding Korean-Canadian rapper Tablo
(@blobyblo), whose claims to being a Stanford University graduate are hotly
disputed by many netizens, shifted to Twitter, with his account being bombarded
by messages of support and, sometimes, criticism.
But for Lee Mee-na, a public relations manager and social media expert, brushes
like this are just further proof that Twitter's upward trajectory has a long way
to run yet.
"I think that as more and more celebrities get involved and as companies urge
their employees to use Twitter, people will end up using it whether they really
care about it or not," she said. "In truth, Twitter's progress in Korea has only
just begun."