This study investigated how Japanese learners of Korean perceive the similarity of stop sounds between the Korean and Japanese languages. The results found, compared to the beginner’s group, the advanced group showed a lower rating value for the similarity for the same stimulus sound, and the learners with a higher perception ability distinguished lower similarities, even among the inner groups of the beginner’s and advanced group. This study also investigated how the related information in the native language affects how the learners perceive lenis consonants in word-medial position in the Korean language, as Japanese stop sounds are divided into two sounds depending on [±voiced] feature, whereas Korean stop sounds do not have a voiced sound in word-initial consonantal context, but the lenis consonants go through voicing in word-medial position. In result, Japanese learners tend to perceive the lenis consonants in word-medial position much better than other sounds, and it was shown that the related information in native language had played a positive role in perceiving Korean word-medial consonants.

The purpose of this study is to examine if Japanese and Chinese language learners of Korean, whose native language has a CV syllable structure, can apply the liaison rule when C2 of Korean the CVC syllable structure is followed by a vowel, where the application of liaison rule is necessary. For this purpose, Japanese and Chinese learners of Korean were divided into two groups by their Korean proficiency levels: beginner and advanced learners. Then the study examined if these learners can apply the Korean liaison rule in the sentence reading task. The result showed that learners in their higher proficiency level were able to apply the liaison rule better. The degree of increased application was more drastic, especially in the cases of Japanese learners. The performance varied by their native languages, it appears that Japanese learners better apply the liaison rule than Chinese learners. In addition, the result also differed by the familarity of the vocabularies used in the reading task. The liaison rule was used more accurately in more familiar vocabularies than less familiar vocabularies.