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Like most universities in Seoul, Yonsei has a walled campus within which students may gather and later pour out of the gates, arms locked in highly organized demonstrations. In general, the most violent parts of student demonstrations in South Korea, involving firebombs and tear gas, take place in mid- or late afternoon, after students have assembled and built up sufficient strength in numbers to warrant an attempt to march into the street. In short, foreign correspondents for Western news organizations face a minimum of difficulty in offering timely coverage of demonstrations or unrest in this location.

In the period since 1979, two events in particular help to illuminate the vital role of media in relations between the United States and South Korea. Therefore, the May 1980 Kwangju incident and the February 1981 meeting of South Korea president Chun Doo Hwan with newly-inaugurated president Ronald Reagan in the White House will be discussed in some detail. (Detailed descriptions ommitted here). . . . .

Conclusion
Analysis of the media role in U .S. policy toward the Republic of Korea contributes to a better understanding of the expanded role of television in foreign policy in several ways. These may be summarized in relationship to the conceptual approach presented at the outset.

First, the Korean case helps to refine our understanding of the relationship between media intensity and the foreign policy process. The Kwangju incident, although a central problem in South Korean politics and in the U.S. relationship with that nation, never received saturation coverage or became a lead television news story. One important reason was that its dramatic and violent visual scenes fit the familiar story line established by coverage of Korea during the 1970s and 1980s. The television organizations and those correspondents dispatched to Kwangju had ample prior experience gathering pictures of a nation wracked by student demonstrations, assassinations, acts of terror or violence, and on occasion threatened by a hostile neighbor to the north. A second, equally important reason for the lack of prominence was the silence of President Carter and Secretary of State Edmund Muskie during the incident, even when citizens of Kwangju appealed to the United States to mediate. Finally, unlike the 1989 massacre in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, which closely coincided with a visit to China by the Sovietleader Mikhail Gorbachev, U. S. television had no such second story line or alternative reason for spotlighting events surrounding Kwangju.