How much do you know about diplomacy? Maybe most of people only recall something abstract or stuffy to their mind. For example, when someone asks them "Do you know what diplomats do?", they will answer "Well, it only has to do with government and the Ministry of Foreign Affair. I don't know well but maybe diplomats have diplomatic conferences with other nations' diplomats, right?" How abstract and stuffy. Like this, for the general public, diplomacy seems quite distant. However, after Social Network Service, so-called SNS, appeared, it has largely changed. SNS gradually closes the distance between diplomacy and the general public who originally did not have interests on diplomacy. However, there is also concerns that SNS can effect negatively to diplomacy and interrupt it. So, in this situation, we have to ask "Does SNS really work as a diplomatic tool?", "Is SNS an effective means for Korean diplomacy?".
At first, it is important to fully understand what diplomacy is and what SNS is. People are often confused that they already know them well. However, to understand the function of SNS in diplomacy, we have to study something more fundamental.
As I said, many people think diplomacy as abstract and stuffy thing. However, their view point is an old one. As time goes by, diplomacy also changed. In the past, there was only traditional diplomacy called hard diplomacy. But, now, there is a new type of diplomacy, which use soft power such as media, cultural exchange and so on. When we consider this new type of diplomacy, we must come up with SNS. SNS is short for Social Network Service and it has high accessibility, various information and is global and universal web-service. The viewpoints of SNS is divided into five. The first one is a standpoint that considers SNS as a tool of computer mediation communication. The second one is about social relation network. The third one is about subject for study of computer utilization. The forth and last one is considering it as a mean of marketing and the place of exerting influence. And what I want to focus on is the last two viewpoints. As there are lots of viewpoints about SNS, people's attention toward it is also increasing.
According to Makiind, professional company of social media branding, about 2.4 billion people are users of the Internet. Especially in Korea, about 82.5% of Korean use the Internet. Not only the Internet users but also smart phone users are enormous; over 60% of Korean uses smart phone. The important thing is that, according to Ministry of Public Administration and Security, these users usually do exchange activities such as SNS with their smart phone. As we can see, because of development of technology, people started to live in information communicative machines.
After we consider these two concepts, we can think about my argument 'Social Network Service, so-called SNS, is an effective tool for diplomacy of Korea.'
Then how does it help diplomacy? As I already said, we are living in plentiful information. This means that people can easily access to SNS. Everyone can get various information that they want to know. This advantage can also be accepted in diplomacy. In the past, the image of diplomacy was not that good. People don't know what diplomats do and they feel sense of distance from diplomacy. However, SNS can solve such prejudice. For example, there are lots of page in Facebook. These are made by organization related to diplomacy such as Culture Affairs Bureau of Mofa, Development Cooperation Bureau of Mofa, Korean Cultural Center, Korea Brand Forum and so on. They made their own SNS Page to reduce the distance between them and public. And SNS is the best way to accomplish their purpose because it has high accessibility. Whenever and wherever people can access to their page and get information freely. I think making public be interested in diplomacy is helpful for development of diplomacy of Korea.
SNS also can be an important route to introduce Korean culture to foreigners. For example, in Youtube, there are lots of videos related to Korea. Because we don't have to pay or log in when we enjoy SNS, everyone can easily enjoy various information. This function cannot be carried by traditional diplomacy. Only when we use SNS, we can introduce our country and culture more rapidly and widely than when we only use traditional diplomacy. In addition, there's nothing better than SNS that can be indirect experience space. When diplomats want to introduce our culture and country to other countries, they have to go abroad or invite foreigners to Korea. It costs a lot. However, when they use SNS, there's no worrying about financial problem.
Because of the high accessibility and the features that everyone can post the article, many people are worrying that the information from SNS is inaccurate and it can rather give negative image of Korea to foreigners. However, these problems can be easily solved. The opponents don't have to worry about that. Nowadays, many organizations realized early that the power of SNS is enormous and they know the advantages of promotion with SNS. Therefore, many of them are already expanding their fields to SNS and actively use it.
For example, there are lots of SNS official Facebook Page made by these organization. Because these Pages are run by them, reliability of information from there is high. Not only in Facebook but also in Youtube, there are lots of official Channel run by these national organization. They make video about what they do and various information that public and foreigners wonder. Also, I think that the more SNS develops, the more information became accurate. Therefore, their argument that information from SNS is so inaccurate that we can't use it for diplomacy is wrong.
As the utilization rate of SNS is dramatically increasing, it is important to gravely consider the function of it. Also, it is critical to consider how to utilize SNS in an effective way and using it in diplomacy is one of the examples of this. I think SNS is an effective tool for diplomacy of Korea. If people acknowledge my argument, we can improve our diplomacy with SNS more effectively than before. It is not a good choice to get rid of SNS from diplomacy. Potentiality of diplomacy when using SNS, is large. If people effectively reflect strong points of SNS and solve the wrong point of SNS, we can enhance our national image and solve the problem of diplomacy. I will emphasis the effectiveness of using SNS. All of us, Korean, may have an desire to widely introduce Korea and our culture to abroad. To achieve your desire, using SNS will be helpful.
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