This study aims at 1)describing the types and the uses of the reference terms for the third person, and 2)show-ing how the predicate forms change according to the politeness with which the hearers are treated. It is treaded asthe first step of a contrastive study on the way of expressions of politeness in Japanese and Korean, It has been claimed that politeness tends to be expressed relatively in Japanese and absolutely in Korean. Thattendency is confirmed in this study. There are, however, some cases which do not accord to it. Some different ten-dency can be also seen in this study. For example, “otoosan, okaasan" and “appa, eomma" are used for father andmother when the hearer is the speaker's friend, and the Korean “jal issseo" which does not express politeness is usedfor parents when the hearer is the speaker's friend. These cases have commonness in that the speaker is intimatewith the hearer.This study has also found that there are some differences in the expressions of politeness for parents betweenJapanese and Korean. For example, Japanese show more politeness to their seniors in the workplace than to theirparents. Korean show more politeness to their parents than to the seniors in the workplace.