Do You Know About the Blue House Aides’ “Six-Hour Rapid Response” Overnight Watch System?

[Choice Times=Joo-hyun Park, CEO of Jae-Dam Entertainment]

As President Lee Jae-myung has begun posting a stream of messages directly on X (formerly Twitter), the presidential office has moved to strengthen its response apparatus. According to JoongAng Ilbo, the Blue House plans to establish a “six-hour rapid response system,” under which initial responses and follow-up measures must be prepared within six hours whenever policy or media issues arise. The president typically posts on X directly from his mobile phone, and recently his posts have frequently appeared late at night or early in the morning. (Editor’s note)

So the Blue House aides have built a “six-hour rapid response system.” In plain terms, they are standing a 24-hour overnight watch to clean up the president’s round-the-clock barrage of tweets—his stream of “whatever comes to mind.”

Reading this, I began to wonder whether the Korean government is an institution for running a state, or a customer service center for a food-delivery app. Policy review is not a cup of instant noodles—you don’t just pour in hot water and have it ready in six hours. The very idea that serious policy can be whipped up on that timeline is proof of this administration’s recklessness.

What is most bizarre is the attitude of the aides themselves. They reportedly engaged in soul-searching, saying, “We must have been so slow to respond that the president felt compelled to step in personally.”

Of course, in disasters or emergencies, a 24-hour response system is essential. But wasn’t this the same president who was filming entertainment content when an actual crisis occurred? That civil servants are now expected to scramble within six hours not for emergencies, but for media coverage or policy chatter—no matter how generously one tries to interpret it—simply does not look like the behavior of sane professionals.

Any aide with common sense should be telling him, “Mr. President, please stop tweeting at 3 a.m. and go to sleep.” In the 21st century, global norms emphasize work-life balance and the “right to disconnect” after hours. Yet here we have a president single-handedly resurrecting a bygone culture of all-night work, effectively saying, “I’m awake, so you’d better be on standby too.”

Policy is not a late-night love letter written in a burst of emotion. It is a precision instrument that requires careful consideration of countless interests and ripple effects. Claiming that such work can be completed in six hours is tantamount to confessing, “We will run the country without thinking.”

Where has Korea’s institutional system disappeared to, if civil servants are now expected to produce responses within six hours based on a single individual’s emotionally charged, pre-dawn post? After floating spur-of-the-moment ideas about abolishing the government cafeteria, the administration now seems ready to switch the entire state system on and off according to the president’s mood.

The president is playing at being an “absolute ruler” with a smartphone in his hand. Bureaucrats, dancing to his rhythm, have checked their souls at the door. Watching this spectacle, citizens are entitled to ask: what the president truly wants to delete is not something trivial like a cafeteria—but common sense itself, in the Republic of Korea.

#SixHourResponse #PresidentialTweets #GovernanceByImpulse