There are two contrastive positions for the debate over the nature of phonological representation that loanword adaptation crucially refers to. First, loan adaptation is phonological in that the borrower operates on the mental representation of an L2 (source language) sound or structure, not directly on its surface phonetic form (LaCharit？ and Paradis 2005). Second, in the Phonetic Approach the auditory output in L2 is the input for perception in L1 (adapting language) (Silverman 1992; Steriade 2001). Thai and Korean exhibit a three-way laryngeal distinction for stops, while English has a binary [+voice] phonemic contrast. Then a question arises as to how English stops with the binary laryngeal distinction are mapped to the stops with three-way laryngeal contrast in Korean and Thai. This paper argues for the Phonetic Approach by investigating the context-dependent adaptation of English stops in Korean and Thai.