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The purpose of this paper is to show what tense and aspect systems English and Korean have and what similarities and differences the two languages show in terms of tense and aspect. Korean tends to simplify tense and aspect markers in a verb phrase when tense and aspect are predictable on the basis of adverbials and contextual information. Thus, a lot of Korean sentences have verb phrases containing neutralized tense and aspect markers because of time adverbials and contextual information, while English sentences contain unambiguous tense and aspect indicators in verb phrases. English verb phrases expressing tense and aspect strictly determine what adverbials they can be co-used with within a sentence. English tense and aspect markers in verb phrases do not bring about the possibility of misinterpretation. However, Korean tense and aspect are likely to be misinterpreted because they should be individually or subjectively determined depending on how readers interpret time adverbials and contexts in Korean sentences. For this reason, the interpretation of Korean tense and aspect in sentences has been ambiguous and controversial.