The purpose of this study was to explore the cross-linguistic difference in the spectral movement pattern of American English and Korean vowels. Eight American vowels /a/, /e/, /$varepsilon$/, /i/, /I/, /o/, /u/, and /$mho$/, and five Korean vowels, /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/ and /u/ in a fricative-vowel environment produced by adult speakers of each language were analyzed. The spectral movement patterns of the first two formant frequency values were measured and analyzed. The results showed that Korean vowels had minimal spectral movement, both in F1 and F2 values, as compared to American English vowels. Moreover, no consistent direction of movement was found in the three corner Korean vowels, while American English vowels showed consistent direction of movement for each vowel of the same phonemic category.