[en] Since its introduction 20 years ago, nuclear cardiology in the Republic of Korea has grown impressively and is now widely used as a noninvasive procedure in the diagnosis and functional evaluation of various types of heart diseases. All of the classes of procedures, that is, first-pass radionuclide cardioangiography, gated blood pool scan, myocardial perfusion imaging, and myocardial infarct imaging, are being employed frequently and have been the subject of numerous studies. First-pass radionuclide ventriculography is being used in the detection and quantification of intracardiac shunts, the evaluation of chamber size, function, or cardiopulmonary dynamics in various disease states. With gated blood pool scans, several parameters of cardiac function are being measured in a variety of conditions including coronary heart disease. Quantifications of regurgitations are also being done. Both thallium-201 and technetium-99m pyrophosphate are being used in the diagnosis of coronary artery disease. Besides clinical imaging, active research in the field of nuclear cardiology has also been taking place in the Republic of Korea. Examples include investigations on new imaging agents such as ¹¹¹In-antimyosin monoclonal antibody and hexakis technetium(I) cations, or instrumental developments such as the nuclear stethoscope. Despite such noteworthy accomplishments, however, there have also been some obstacles to further developments in the Republic of Korea, such as the unavailability of a cyclotron. Nevertheless, considering the rate of expansion these procedures are showing and the effort we are putting into further development, the future for nuclear cardiology in the Republic of Korea appears quite promising and may become an example for other developing countries. (author). 28 refs, 5 figs, 2 tabs