This study investigated the articulatory and acoustic correlates of Korean /1/. In particular, direct comparison between Korean /1/ and English /1/ was made to evaluate the current assumption about Korean /1/ such that Korean /1/ is phonetically similar to English clear /1/. The present study revealed that Korea /1/ is different from English /1/ in several properties. First, F2 for Korean /1/ is around 600-700 Hz higher than F2 for English /1/. The overall higher F2 for Korean /1/ is attributed to the fact that Korean /1/ involves tongue body raising while it lacks a dorsal gesture. Second, F3 value for Korean /1/ becomes significantly lower when the preceeding vowel is a back vowel. This kind of variable F3 pattern was not observed in English /1/. The current study relates the F3 lowering to the retroflexion of Korean /1/ in the back vowel context.