The Y-linked tetranucleotide repeat (GATA)n of microsatellite locus DYS19 and RFLPs detected by the probe 47z (DXYS5Y) have been examined from a total of unrelated 480 male samples in Korean population. The frequency of Y1 and Y2 alleles in DXYS5Y locus found to be 95.4% (458/480) and 4.6% (22/480), respectively. Although the frequency of the Y2 allele in this study is not as high as published previously, the presence of both Y1 and Y2 alleles in this population is consistent with other survey that the Y2 allele revealed to have restricted geographic distribution in Korean and Japanese group. We identified all five common alleles at the DYS19 locus. The C allele is the most frequent (212/480), followed by the D (136/480), B (75/480), E (36/480) and A (21/480) allele. This predominance of the C allele is similar to the majority of the results previously reported from Asian populations. Nine haplotypes are identified with respect to the DYS19/DXYS5Y combination, and the mean combination haplotype diversity is 0.72. On the basis of results for the DYS19/DXYS5Y haplotypes, Korean population appears to share a common genetic structure of some magnitude with Japanese, in agreement with the hypothesis that Korea was the origin of migration routes of Yayoi immigrants of Japan.