Purpose: The purpose of this study was to analyze the smoking behaviors and to identify the impact of depression, temperament, and characteristics of smoking experience on rural adolescents. Method: A survey using a selfadministered questionnaire was done of 310 rural high school students. Using SPSS 12.0, Pearson correlation coefficients and multiple regression were used to analyze the data. Results: The smoking rate of rural high school students was higher than that of the national rate for this age group. Serious depression was observed in the rural high school students. There was a positive correlation among smoking experience, school records, novelty seeking and a negative correlation between smoking and cooperativeness. The significant predictors of smoking experience were type of school, satisfaction with school, school records, novelty seeking, reward dependence and cooperativeness. These factors accounted for 38.9% of variances in the smoking experience of rural adolescents. Conclusion: These results suggest that adolescents who exhibit factors identified in this study are regarded as having the potential to smoke, and this result proposes the basis for program development for the prevention of smoking and smoking cessation.