This study investigated language transfer, particularly in the realm of pragmatics, in a native Korean-speaking student of advanced Japanese. A series of tasks including a verbal report were used to elicit Japanese production and comprehension data. Results indicate that the learner drew heavily on his native language in completing the tasks, but that in pragmatic areas of language his performance deviated from generally accepted linguistic norms to a greater degree than his overall language proficiency would indicate. It is concluded that although language transfer helps learners attain a high level of global proficiency in a closely-related target language, it may be less effective in helping them attain a similar level of pragmatic competence in that language. This suggests that metapragmatic knowledge and affective variables may have a greater influence on development of pragmatic competence than they do on the development of other areas of target-language competence. (Contains 63 references.) (MSE)