Recently, new ginseng cultivars having superior agricultural traits have been developed in Korea. For newly developed plant cultivars, the identifi cation of distinctiveness is very important factors not only in plant cultivar management but also in breeding programs. Thus, eighty-fi ve inter simple sequence repeat (ISSR) primers were applied to detect polymorphisms among six major Korean ginseng cultivars and two foreign ginsengs. A total of 197 polymorphic bands with an average 5.8 polymorphic bands and 2.9 banding patterns per assay unit across six Korean ginseng cultivars and foreign ginsengs from 236 amplifi ed ISSR loci with an average 6.9 loci per assay unit were generated by 34 out of 85 ISSR primers. Three species of Panax ginseng including the Korean ginseng cultivars, P. quinquefolius, and P. notoginseng, could be readily discriminated using most tested primers. UBC-821, UBC-868, and UBC-878 generated polymorphic bands among the six Korean ginseng cultivars, and could distinguish them from foreign ginsengs. Sequence characterized amplifi ed region (SCAR) marker system was introduced in order to increase the reproducibility of the polymorphism. One SCAR marker, PgI821C650, was successfully converted from the randomly amplifi ed polymorphism by UBC-821. It showed the expected dominant polymorphism among ginseng samples. In addition, the specifi c polymorphism for Sunwon was generated by treating Taq I restriction enzyme to polymerase chain reaction products of PgI821C650. These results will serve as useful DNA markers for identifi cation of Korean ginseng, especially Sunwon cultivar, seed management, and molecular breeding program supplemented with marker-assisted selection.