Joint attention, language development, and the relationship between these two variables were compared in infants from multi-cultural and Korean families. Joint attention was observed in both the Early Social Communication Scale (ESCS) and in infant-mother free play. Language development was evaluated by means of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory-Korean. There were no group differences in initiating and responding to joint attention in ESCS. However, in infant-mother free play, joint attention episodes were less and shorter in duration with infants from multi-cultural families than in Korean infants. The size of both the expressive and receptive vocabulary was also smaller in infants from multi-cultural families than in Korean infants. In terms of Korean infants, mean duration of joint attention episodes in free play showed a significant positive correlation with the size of the expressive vocabulary and initiating joint attention in ESCS also showed a significant positive correlation with the size of receptive vocabulary. However, none of the measures of joint attention indicated a significant relationship with the size of either expressive or receptive vocabulary in infants from multi-cultural families.