Announcing a list of the most viral tweets and memorable moments of the year, Twitter Korea said the Sewol ferry tragedy that took the lives of more than 300 people was at the top.
“On the day the Sewol sank, the microblogging service in Korea was flooded with tweets and retweets praying for those on board the ferry to come home safely, and also checking for follow-ups,” Soh Young-sun, market director of Twitter Korea said on Thursday.
A slew of Korean Twitter users also joined a yellow ribbon campaign in which they put up a picture featuring a yellow ribbon on their Twitter accounts, wishing for the survival of the people on the sunken ferry and to show their support for the bereaved families.
Singer G-Dragon’s tweet “#PRAYFORSOUTHKOREA” was retweeted 53,000 times, becoming the most retweeted of the year in the nation, according to the social network service.
Figure skating queen Kim Yu-na, a silver medalist at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, was the second-most popular topic of the year on Twitter.
Even though she was a gold medal favorite and narrowly missed due to judging controversies, the SNS was packed with messages from those wishing to congratulate the skater and show their appreciation.
The number of hashtags supporting Kim reached a record 63,000 before the closing ceremony of the Olympics.
The third most viral issue was the local elections on June 4 for local governors and mayors.
Twitter has been serving as a platform for election candidates to promote their campaigns, and for the public to discuss political issues since its launch of the service in 2011 here.
Other memorable events of the year included the FIFA World Cup preliminary match between South Korea and Algeria on June 23 and Pope Francis’ Mass in Korea on Aug. 15, according to Twitter.
K-pop stars including Psy and the members of Super Junior dominated the list of the top 10 Korean Twitter accounts with the most followers.
By Kim Young-won (wone0102@heraldcorp.com)
