Addiction to social media is not limited to children and young people. A growing number of political leaders are turning to social media to communicate directly with their constituencies. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Donald Trump are among the most active political communicators on social media and have some of the largest followings — nearly 400 million for Modi and 264 million for Trump. South Korean President Lee Jae Myung is a recent addition to this list. Calling social media his "lifeline," Lee has increasingly turned to X, formerly Twitter, and other platforms to communicate directly with millions of followers.
Since taking office last June, he has uploaded more than 1,000 posts on X, his preferred communication channel. Initially, he averaged fewer than two posts a day, but that figure has risen to six in recent months. His increasing use of the platform coincides with a decline in his approval rating, which plunged from more than 60 percent early this year to below 40 percent. Sky-high housing prices, falling stock prices and other economic woes, along with progressives' disappointment over his perceived slowdown on key reforms, are behind the decline in his approval rating.
Lee's growing number of X posts is seen as a desperate attempt to regain public confidence in his administration. Indeed, many of his posts are designed to counter criticism of his signature policies, notably measures to clamp down on real-estate speculation. In one post, Lee attacked his critics as "low-level profiteering groups" who would not mind a "national collapse." In another, he denounced hard-line liberal groups opposed to his appointment of a former prosecutor who some argue is anti-reform to head a new investigation agency.
President Lee uses X not only for domestic matters but also to comment on diplomatic issues, including highly sensitive ones. Earlier this year, Lee criticized the Israeli government for its treatment of Palestinians. Sharing a video of Israeli soldiers dropping the body of a Palestinian boy from a rooftop, Lee strongly condemned the act on X, saying it was comparable to the Holocaust. The post led to a diplomatic dispute, with Israeli authorities calling it "unacceptable." More recently, Lee expressed anger at the Ukrainian government for revealing the defection of two North Korean soldiers to South Korea. The soldiers had been captured by Ukraine while fighting for Russia. Seoul had asked Kyiv to keep their arrival in South Korea confidential, apparently to avoid provoking Pyongyang.
Like many other world leaders, Lee finds social media extremely convenient and efficient for reaching his constituents quickly, without going through the cumbersome and often biased gatekeepers of traditional media. He believes that he has long been victimized by legacy media outlets that have "distorted the truth and smeared and attacked (me) with falsehoods." "The more distorted attacks intensify, the more (I need) to communicate directly with people and depend on them," he wrote on X last month.
Lee may be right about the falsehoods and biases produced by legacy media. But it is also true that social media can generate the same degree of misinformation and polarization — the very features of the media environment he now embraces. Without thorough fact-checking and the scrutiny of journalistic gatekeepers, social media messages can be equally distorting and misleading. A case in point is the video of Israeli soldiers dropping the Palestinian boy. The incident had not occurred recently, as Lee initially believed; it was a 2-year-old video that eventually forced him to correct his post.
The dangers of direct communication by political leaders through social media can multiply when it comes to diplomatic and international matters, where fact-checking is much more difficult than in domestic affairs. Indeed, President Trump has caused diplomatic mayhem numerous times through his frequent, often unhinged and impulsive posts. Posting an average of 17 times a day on his Truth Social platform, he often conveys outright incorrect messages about his key foreign policies, confusing not only foreign governments but also US foreign-policy circles. Such posts can also trigger erratic reactions in capital markets worldwide. His precarious posts about whether the Strait of Hormuz was secure in the wake of the US war with Iran, or whether the war in Ukraine was over, provide good examples.
Like President Lee, Trump's blind attachment to direct messaging through social media is rooted in his deep distrust of established media outlets, which are generally critical of him. Trump often calls legacy media organizations such as The New York Times and CNN "fake news" or "the public enemy." His latest assault on them was the expulsion of journalists from CNN and two other critical news outlets from the White House press room, although the decision was later revoked by a court.
Fortunately, President Lee has not yet displayed such open hostility toward traditional media. He does not personally attack or insult specific media companies or journalists for criticizing his administration, as Trump does. Lee's posts are mostly mild compared with Trump's toxic messages. A Seoul newspaper estimates that 85 percent of Lee's X posts are neutral. But if Lee's popularity continues to decline — or fails to recover soon enough — he may be tempted to weaponize his posts in order to galvanize his supporters and attack his detractors, as Trump does.
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Lee Byung-jong
Lee Byung-jong is a former Seoul correspondent for Newsweek, The Associated Press and Bloomberg News. He is a professor at the School of Global Service at Sookmyung Women’s University in Seoul. The views expressed here are the writer’s own. — Ed.
khnews@heraldcorp.com