Abstract

The present study began with consideration of two related issues : the need to develop culture-fair personality inventories for the Korean population ; and the degree to which C.GJung's theory of psy­chological type in applicable to nonwestern cultures. The main purpose of this study, therefore, was to standardize and to introduce the Korean version of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator(MBTI), an ins­trument which measures Jung's theoretical construct in order to help the counseling field in Korea. The first step of the study was conducted with 201 Korean-American Bilingual subjects(Korean-English) drawn from six different cities in the United States, and 141 college students, 232 high school students and 200 working adults drawn from various cities in Korea. The total sample number was 774. The validity and reliability of the Korean version of the MBTI were tested and received satisfac­tory results. The second step of the study was conducted to provide the Korean norm for the type distributions of the high school students, college students and working adults in Korea. For this purpose, research samples were drawn from Seoul and local areas in Korea: 1,142 high school students, 1,441 college stu­dents, and 2,617 adults. The total sample was 5,200. The characteristics of the personality type distribution for each group were analyzed and compared with their counter groups in Western culture.The authors included discussions on the possibilities to explore different avenues and ways to use the MBTI in the field of the counseling as well as organizational settings.