A Contrastive Study of Lexical Use in Japanese and Korean Hotel Reviews —Focusing on High-Frequency Nouns and Co-occurrence Networks —

This study compared the lexical organization of Japanese and Korean hotel reviews. Morphological analysis was applied to 8,177 Japanese and 1,354 Korean Booking.com reviews from Tokyo and Seoul to examine frequent nouns, core-noun co-occurrence networks, and positive/negative-field vocabulary. Given the different analyzers, POS(Part of Speech) systems, and word units, within-language structures were compared, rather than cross-linguistic frequencies. Heya(“room”) in Japanese and wichi(“location”) in Korean ranked highest in frequency, document frequency, and weighted degree. Their networks were in contrast: heya organizes terms for room conditions, comfort, facilities, and sensory environments, while wichi organizes terms for accessibility, urban mobility, and surroundings. Evaluations were asymmetric. Japanese negative reviews centered on heya, whereas positive reviews extended to staff and location; Korean positive reviews centered on wichi, whereas negative reviews were dispersed across domains. The results reveal distinct lexical frameworks for hotel evaluations and show, in contrast to Koreans, a Japanese tendency toward mitigated, room-centered criticism.