Tokyo:
Officials in the Japanese city of Yokohama were left red-faced on Wednesday after mistakenly announcing the launch of a North Korean missile to 40,000 followers on Twitter.
The city, south of Tokyo, prematurely fired its Tweet just before noon (0300 GMT), announcing "North Korea has launched a missile" with blank spaces to indicate the exact time.
"We received a call from one of our followers who had noticed the mistake. We had the Tweet ready and waiting, but for an unknown reason it was dispatched erroneously," said a city official.
The city retracted the Tweet about 20 minutes later and apologised to followers of @yokohama_saigai, the official said.
Japan is on full alert ahead of an expected mid-range missile launch by North Korea, with Patriot missiles stationed in its capital to protect the 30 million people who live there.
In addition to PAC-3 batteries, Aegis destroyers equipped with sea-based interceptor missiles have been deployed in the Sea of Japan (East Sea).
Twitter is wildly popular in Japan, where the ideograph and pictograph-based language is well-suited to the 140 character limit, allowing much more information to be imparted than alphabetic languages like English.
The city, south of Tokyo, prematurely fired its Tweet just before noon (0300 GMT), announcing "North Korea has launched a missile" with blank spaces to indicate the exact time.
"We received a call from one of our followers who had noticed the mistake. We had the Tweet ready and waiting, but for an unknown reason it was dispatched erroneously," said a city official.
The city retracted the Tweet about 20 minutes later and apologised to followers of @yokohama_saigai, the official said.
Japan is on full alert ahead of an expected mid-range missile launch by North Korea, with Patriot missiles stationed in its capital to protect the 30 million people who live there.
In addition to PAC-3 batteries, Aegis destroyers equipped with sea-based interceptor missiles have been deployed in the Sea of Japan (East Sea).
Twitter is wildly popular in Japan, where the ideograph and pictograph-based language is well-suited to the 140 character limit, allowing much more information to be imparted than alphabetic languages like English.
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