The present work has been conducted to understand the decay processes of the Cs-5p and Ba-5p core excitons in CsCl and BaF 2 , respectively, where the Auger decay process of the Cs-5p and Ba-5p core holes is energetically forbidden. The core-exciton peaks are missing in the excitation spectra for the Auger-free luminescence, which arises from a radiative decay of the valence electrons into these core holes. Resonant enhancement effects of the valence-band photoelectron spectra are observed around 13 eV for CsCl and 17 eV for BaF 2 . The effects are attributed to the nonradiative decay through the direct-recombination process of an excited electron and the Cs-5p or Ba-5p core hole forming the core exciton. It is also found that the core exciton deforms its surrounding lattice with relaxation energies of about 0.3 eV in CsCl and 0.9 eV in BaF 2 . The nonradiative direct-recombination probabilities of the core excitons are estimated to be about 32% and 75% for CsCl and BaF 2 , respectively, by taking account of the lattice relaxation effects.