As of today Twitter users in North and South Korea can view Twitter.com, the mobile site and the iPhone and Android apps in Korean characters. Twitter has partnered with Korean web portal Daum to display Korean tweets on its homepage and Korean telcom service LG+ to make Twitter available on SMS.
Twitter co-founder Evan Williams, who is apparently in South Korean capital Seoul at the moment, celebrated the milestone with the above tweet, which translated means “Twitter is a real-time global information network.”
Twitter’s announcement post also suggests Korean users to follow, in Korean. Translation below:
“By making Twitter available in Korean, people will be able to more easily connect with people and accounts that are most meaningful to them. There are plenty of great Korean users to follow already, including:
- @oisoo posts witty Tweets, some of which were published in a best-selling essay last year.
- @moviejhp shares insight on his life as a movie actor.
- You can find comedian and TV show host @keumkangkyung and TV anchor @kimjuha on Twitter.
- Super Junior band members: @donghae861015, @heedictator, @siwon407, @shinsfriends, @special1004, @allrisesilver, and @ryeong9 are on Twitter.
If you want more ideas for Korean accounts to follow in politics, business, technology, sports and other areas, check out these lists, organized by topic. (Make sure your language is set to Korean to see Korean accounts.)”
Twitter users in South Korea have grown 10x since only a year ago. There is no mention of North Korea, and its somewhat conspicuous official Twitter presence, anywhere in the post.
Korean is the seventh international language Twitter now supports, joining English, French, German, Italian, Japanese and Spanish. Twitter plans on adding more languages by the end of the year, which makes sense as 70% of its user base is international.
You can change your language to Korean by going to “Settings > Language > Korean.”