CONTENT-ANALYSIS OF THE UNITED-STATES ATTITUDE ON FREE-TRADE TOWARD SOUTH-KOREA AND TAIWAN

This study examines the rhetorical fairness of the Bush administration's attitude toward the trading practices of South Korea and Taiwan through a content analysis of speeches of senior U.S. officials. The study updates Sung Gul Hong's research on such attitudes of the Reagan administration during its second term. The current study measures the tone (positive or negative) and the tense (past or present) of public comments of senior U.S. officials to examine whether Korea and/or Taiwan were treated fairly in these speeches. Unlike Hong's article, this research considers the actual trade barriers of Korea and Taiwan as reported by the U. S. government. These barriers provide the baseline for evaluating the fairness of the public comments. The study finds that the Bush administration presented Taiwan as more positive and responsive than Korea. This was a reversal of the situation during the second term of the Reagan administration. According to U.S. government measures, from 1990 to 1992, Korea's trading practices were less open than Taiwan's. This suggests that the Bush administration's public comments regarding the trading practices of Korea and Taiwan were fair and matched the U.S. government's assessment of the policies of those two countries. In other words, Korea and Taiwan were not discriminated against when compared with each other.