This study conducted an empirical analysis using a sample of actual investing firms to identify the ownership determinants influencing the decision between joint ventures and wholly-owned investments in the foreign direct investment component of Korean firms' internationalization strategies for the Chinese region, whose importance has been increasingly growing amid the wave of liberalization. Based on two major theoretical perspectives on ownership determination—the transaction cost perspective and the bargaining power model—variables applicable to Korean firms' investments in the Chinese region were extracted to construct a research model, and several of the adopted variables were found to have explanatory power. The results showed some differences from prior studies on ownership determination that focused on advanced multinational enterprises; specifically, the parent firm's management capability, marketing capability, special economic zones and coastal open areas, and export ratio variables were found to be significant. Centering on these key variables, the determinants of Korean firms' ownership decisions were analyzed and possible policy implications were derived.