It was found that the cumulative views of the reels that Oh Se-hoon, the Seoul mayor, posted on social media (SNS) during the 38 days after being suspended from duties to fully enter the June 3 local elections surpassed 54 million.
During the same period, the figure is 18 times higher than the views of Democratic Party of Korea Seoul mayoral candidate Chong Won-o, who competed against Oh. Analysts said the results overturn the prevailing perception that the conservative camp is weaker than the progressive camp in using SNS.
◇ Over 54 million views in 38 days
On the 14th, a review of SNS and political circles showed that Oh's campaign posted a total of 190 Instagram posts from Apr. 27 to June 3, the election period. The posts garnered a total of 2,161,896 likes and 91,918 comments. The average per post was 11,378 likes and 484 comments. Shares totaled 699,424, averaging 3,681 shares per post.
Instagram views of Oh's campaign posts surpassed 54 million in total. Compared with the roughly 3 million views for Chong's camp, that is about an 18-fold gap. Observers said the strategy went beyond simply posting often, reworking content into formats suitable for short videos and sharing, which led to a surge in views.
◇ "Keep it under 2 minutes"… even debates reworked into short-form
Oh's campaign set a principle of producing all videos under two minutes during the election period. It minimized "record-type postings" that list the candidate's schedule in chronological order. Rather than the on-site photos or attendance records common on politicians' SNS, the aim was to foreground policies and messages that voters would actually be curious about.
A representative example is the debate footage. Instead of uploading the full two-hour debate, the campaign extracted only the key scenes by issue and reworked them into short-form so younger people could understand them in a short time. Heavier policy issues such as real estate, jobs, transportation and care were delivered at a pace and in a format familiar to Instagram users.
Leveraging citizen participation is also cited as a differentiator. The campaign shared to Oh's account story posts uploaded by citizens who took photos with Oh or who personally used the Garden of Thanks, the Hangang Bus, and other services. Rather than a one-way delivery of messages by the candidate, the structure allowed the candidate's account to further spread everyday posts by citizens.
Oh's campaign positioned people in their 20s and 30s not as mere targets of promotion but as agents participating in content dissemination. The explanation was that, instead of the candidate speaking to young people on screen, the focus was on repeatedly showing scenes of young people and the candidate in the same space.
◇ Toning down party colors and focusing on platform conventions
Another feature was minimizing party branding. In Oh's Instagram content, the People Power Party logo, candidate number, and standardized red-toned card news were relatively inconspicuous. The view appears to be that the moment a party symbol is pushed to the fore, the content is categorized as a camp message and is less likely to spread to voters outside the camp.
This contrasted with Chong's SNS strategy, which emphasized schedules, on-site photos, campaign scenes, and the relationship with President Lee Jae-myung. While Chong's side highlighted the potential for cooperation with the central government as the ruling party's candidate, Oh's side focused on the video conventions that platform users can consume and share in a short time.
In political circles, some also assessed that while politicians' SNS in the past were closer to tools for announcing schedules and rallying supporters, in this election short videos and citizen-participation content were used as tools to reach the center and younger demographics.
According to the campaign, this strategy was possible because of a decision-making structure centered on a small dedicated team. Staff who had worked closely with Oh since his City Hall days oversaw SNS content, and autonomy was granted to make quick judgments on site to produce and post. Given that speed and consistency are crucial in short-form content, streamlining complex approval processes proved effective.
An official from Oh's campaign said, "These Instagram views show that the conventional wisdom that conservatives are weak on SNS was not a problem of camp but of content conventions," adding, "We believe respecting young people's time and speaking in the language of young people proved effective." The official added, "A unified decision-making structure that granted autonomy to a small dedicated team also enabled a swift short-form response."