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rebroadcast of U .S. television news through AFKN". Subsequent efforts by the Chun government to put a favorable "spin" on the White House visit through rebroadcast of pictures from the meeting coincided with the wide circulation in Korea of graphic video-tapes from Japanese, West German, and U.S. television coverage of Kwangju.

Third, the case study also shows that, as a participant in the U.S. policy process toward South Korea, television was primarily dependent on official information rather than a source of new information for policymakers. To some degree, this finding is attributable to long-established patterns of visual newsgathering in an East Asian setting that posed a difficult challenge, linguistically and culturally. However, it stems in part from the president's ability to focus the public attention on himself and other officials through state visits to Korea or such highly visible gestures such as the Reagan summit meeting with President Chun.

A fourth conclusion has to do with television's uniquely powerful ability to narrow the visual focus and to personalize politics. The White House meeting with President Chun Doo Hwan in 1981 was highly visible and brimming with symbolic meaning, especially about the human rights issues. To South Korean audiences it conveyed unqualified support for the man whom many in Korea held responsible for the Kwangju tragedy, and did so at a time when questions were being raised about the U .S. role in the incident. On the other hand, for viewers in the United States the familiar scenes of a president and foreign leader inside and outside the White House were probably more reassuring than alarming, despite the best efforts of the reporters to provide context through their audio narrative.

Finally, the visual focus of the Reagan-Chun White House meeting showed how television provides considerable leeway for government efforts to shape the public policy dialogue. The existing television narrative about Korea virtually ensured that the visit would evoke no public outcry in the United States. The public could be expected to remember Kwangju within the context of earlier protests and political violence in Korea. Furthermore, there was no strong "opposition" constituency in the television narrative to explain the profound political significance of Kwangju for South Korea and for its relationship with the United States, though one did surface in the New York Times coverage in the form of periodic letters to the editor and guest columns.