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After the people’s uprising in 1987, South Korea has become rapidly democratized, and free presidential election has been held every five years. Nevertheless, Korean TV networks seem not to cover these elections fairly and objectively. Thus, their practices have been severely criticized in the public sphere. This study attempts to suggest the ideal type of TV journalism in the presidential election and evaluates how three major Korean TV networks covered the 17th presidential election in 2007. Accordingly, this study’s objectives are to identify major TV news frames in the election coverage and to compare how these news frames have influenced the election outcomes over the past and present presidential elections. For this, we analyzed the TV news items by three major TV networks over the campaign period. From this analysis, we suggest that strategic TV news frames with negative tone did not work against the opposition party candidate in this election, compared to the previous elections. This phenomenon occurred since Korean voters had been exposed to this type of negative coverage many times in the previous elections. Serious questions were raised repetitively regarding the candidate’s ethical behaviors and personal qualifications. Consequently, three networks’ heavy coverage of the BBK issue did not change the predicted election outcome. This study offers the explanation how the TV’s negative coverage against the candidate’s moral qualifications had the boomerang effect on Korean voters. We elaborate social psychological process of how the result of the recent election differs from that of the previous ones.
