This research investigatedhow differently Korean first year high school students respond tocompliments in Korean and in English depending on L2 proficiency,gender, and addressee’s social status. For this study, 54 studentsresponded to a questionnaire consisting of six questions both in Englishand in Korean. Through this questionnaire survey, we investigated howdifferently the participants respond to compliments when they useEnglish and Korean respectively. The results showed that a differencebetween Korean and English positive responses to compliments wasminimal. However, the participants used more ‘accepting’ responses inEnglish than in Korean, and high-level high school learners of Englishshowed more ‘accepting’ responses than low-level high school learnersof English. On the other hand, there was only a slight differencebetween male students and female students in compliment responses,but there was a considerably substantial difference between complimentresponses to older people and to their friends, especially in terms of‘accepting.’ Pedagogical implications related to these results have alsobeen discussed.