Abstract: The article is devoted to the definition of politeness and how it is expressed in the Russian and Korean languages. The subject of the research is lexical and grammatical means of expressing politeness. The author particulary focuses on social relations between interlocutors in the situation of communicatin. The aim of the research is to describe the definition of 'politeness' and how it is expressed in different linguistic cultures. As the material for comparative analysis, the author uses pronouns and various nominative words, both Russian and Korean, that are used when an interlocutor addresses to another interlocutor. Just like Brown and Gilman, the author focuses on the use of pronouns against social parameters of 'power' and 'solidarity'. Even though politeness is often mentioned as a special category in comparative research, semantics and structure of this term remain understudied. For this regard, the author analyzes expression of politeness in the Russian and Korean languages from the point of view of social phenomenon. As a result of the research, the author discovers that both languages use the parameters of 'distance' and 'social hierarchy' to express politeness, however, the Korean language has stricter principles of vertical social hierarchy.