The current research investigated what factors affect the comprehension of reference in Korean discourse using a self-paced reading task. Participants read short stories that consisted of two context sentences and one target sentence. The subject of the target sentences was either continued or shifted from the context sentences. The lexical form of the target sentence`s subject was either full noun phrase or null pronoun. The results showed that Korean-speaking adults understood target sentences more quickly when the subject was continued than when it was shifted from the prior context sentences. The lexical form of sentence subject did not affect the reading times of target sentences, however. The results are discussed in terms of what aspects of discourse comprehension are universal or language-specific.