South Korea

The Blue House is the official residence of the nation’s President, Lee Myung Bak. Korea was the first non-G8 nation to host a G-20 Leaders Summit in November 2011 and the presidential Twitter account came to prominence during that meeting, mutually connecting with nine other world leaders. The tweets are mainly updates and news on state-business and the presidential agenda. The Korean president tweets exclusively in Korean but has used his account for public diplomacy. During his European trip in May 2011 the president tweeted in German, Danish and French: “Hello, I am Lee Myung-Bak, President of the Republic of Korea. I hope that by this visit our relationship will become stronger” which has become his most popular tweet.

@PrimeMinisterKR serves as the official communication channel for the Prime Minister’s Office. South Korea’s Prime Minister Kim Hwang-Sik has not personally tweeted on his institutional Twitter account. Like the presidential account, the account automatically follows all its followers and is among the top 10 accounts in terms of following. It is also the 20th most conversational account with a third of its tweets being @replies. The account is relatively active, with on average two to three tweets per day. Its most retweeted tweet is a contest aimed at sharing the link for the Prime Minister’s Facebook page.