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In the short term, television helped the Reagan administration to redirect domestic public discussion of its Korea policy away from human rights and toward the military and security relationship between the nations. However, to the extent that policies must be successful over the long term and must cope with public opinion in more than one nation, this case study suggests that global television renders "quiet diplomacy" an anachronism. The public message of the Reagan-Chun summit, so heavily laden with symbolism and transmitted instantly and broadly to the South Korean public through multiple channels, then replayed countless times during the years of the Chun government, would presumably outweigh private diplomatic discussions on human rights as a factor in the policy process. The central question concerns the impact, especially over the long term, of private conversations which conflict with broadly visible public gestures.

Given the critical importance of Korea to U .S. foreign policy, the relative lack of television attention to the Kwangju incident and subsequent developments stands in contrast to its more active role in the Philippines revolution, the Iran hostage crisis, or the more recent massacre in Tienanmen Square. The Korean case suggests that when television is less actively engaged in covering foreign affairs, the role of policymakers in constructing the public policy dialogue correspondingly increases. The normative question is whether the news media and citizens ought to cede to the president and government officials such power to focus the public attention on important matters of foreign policy.