Until recently, if you’ve wanted to use Twitter in Korea you’ve had to use an iPod Touch, the Internet or you’ve been holding out for the iPhone, which will be showing up next week. Now, however, you can tweet from your regular phone by using an intermediary application called HanTweet (of course). Let me walk you through the registration process.
To register for HanTweet, you need:
- a mobile phone with a Korean carrier
- a Twitter account.
You don’t need:
- A Korean OR Foreigner Registration Number (Wheeeeee!)
How to Register
1. Put your phone number in the three blocks at the top, and click on the link at the right to have an authorization code sent to your phone. 2. When you receive the 4-digit code on your phone, type it into the second line box and press the big blue button.
If you registered successfully, you will be given a Korean cell phone number to tweet to. Your tweets are processed by HanTweet and uploaded to your Twitter feed immediately. If you put something in the "암호" box, apparently only messages containing that password will be posted online, and the password will be removed before posting.
Click on the second tab to get receiving options. I chose not to receive messages because I don't know how the cost structure works.
Outgoing messages are charged as per your agreement with your mobile carrier. Incoming messages are available from HanTweet for a fee but I don’t know how that works yet and it’s not a service that’s important to me.
Many thanks to Professor Sang-il Oum at KAIST for the information!




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If you want an iPhone, you’ll have to get one from a store because KT’s website does not permit foreigners to register there and we can’t order it by phone either. KT told me we could get them from stores in a couple weeks.
Works great. Thanks. No sending pictures, but still works good.
Interesting! long time waiting for something like this.
The big question is:
how much are the txt message for twitting?
and… can we upload pics to twittpic or somewhere?
ok. sorry. i dind’t understand your last lines.
now i know.
thanks!
but i still wonder…what about uploading pics?
No pics, and the cost of the msg is whatever your phone company charges you. Hantweet only charges you to receive messages (probably because in Korea the sender pays, and Hantweet would be sending you messages, but when you send them to him, he receives them free!)
I can use TwitPic from my Korean phone, but I have to send it as an email not as a text. This service is great though thanks for sharing.
Yes, but I believe emailing from your phone is a fair bit more expensive, isn’t it? Anyhow, if you want to send a photo, that’s how you’d have to go about it.
has anyone tried receiving tweets from this service? what was the cost, and can you select who you receive the messages from, rather than all of the people you follow?
Hi!
First, I’d like to thank you for posting this useful information. How can I change my celphone number on the Hantweet site? I got a new celphone and my old celphone number is the one connected to my current twitter account.
Thanks in advance.
Doddie
The site is timing out on me at the moment, but I think you can go through Twitter, un-authorize hantweet and then re-register.
Amazing! So easy to use. We are about to get married so we are going to tweet about it so no one misses out since friends and family aren’t any where near SK.
I’m also going to post directions on how to use twitter via your information on my web site too. The more people that know the better. You totally rock!
Cheers! Glad it’s useful!
is there any detail on how to receive? In order to receive would you have to click “follow” and “send messsages to mobile”? Or does everything get sent to the phone?