This pa야r presents findings of a comparative analysis of the use of the word democnα:y as bino때aJs (e,g" democracy and freedom) in the US and South Korean newspa야r COlpora, The US corpus is 42 rnillion words comprising foreign news reports taken from the New York Times and the Washington Post from 1댔 to 2야3， The South Korean corpus consists of news articles from the Dong-A Ilbo and the Hankyoreh. The corpus covers the same period between the year 1999 and 2003 and is of a relatively modest size of 200 thou없nd words, The anaJysis has shown di fferences in the frequency of the noun phrases occurring as binornials with demαracy， While human rights-relat어 noun phrases are found to occur most frequently with democracy in the US corpus, it is obseπed that capitalism-related noun phrases occur most frequently in the South Korean corpus, It is a1so found that a number of evaluative and rhetorical functions are perfonned by the binornials of demαracy such as evaluating other countries on their political, sociaJ, and economic problems; criticizing actions 떠ken by the govemment and political oppositions; or stressmg paπnership with other countries,