This study presents two experiments with native Korean-speaking adults, the results of which concern the role of the experiencer phrase in their acquisition of English raising constructions. In the first experiment, 101 Korean learners of English were asked to identify the null infinitival subjects in English raising constructions containing a medial or a fronted experiencer phrase. The results showed that the participants’ performance was better when the experiencer was moved to the beginning of the sentence. The second experiment, an acceptability judgment task with twenty-eight Korean-speaking adults, demonstrated that an experiencer phrase is not permitted in Korean raising constructions, regardless of its position. This suggests that the results of the first experiment do not reflect the influence of L1 grammar. Thus, the L2 learners’ difficulty with medial experiencer phrases may be better explained by the notion of intervention effects reported in previous works, rather than by L1 transfer.