The purpose of this study is to review how Korea Institute of Sport Science (KISS) had carried out sports talent identification and selection for enhancing athletic performance over the last three decades. In the 1980s, KISS had to prepare for the 1986 Asian Games and the 1988 Olympic Games. So, KISS developed test items for sports talent identification for various sports and had identified 4,359 sports talents over 30 sport events. Moreover, KISS developed the standards for elite athlete and had selected talented athletes using them. In the 1990s after the two big sports events, KISS established Talented Athlete Selection Center and constructed the foundation of elite athlete recruitment system. In the 2000s, Korea had suffered a lot of difficulties in recruiting new athletes because of government``s birth control policy effect and economic affluence. So, KISS developed an innovative sports talent identification program and had searched about 500 talented children every year. And KISS developed a new talented athlete selection program and had selected 1,682 talented athletes during 2000s. These new sports talent identification and selection programs are flourishing until now and would be the best sources of national team members in the future.