This paper is intended to show an overview of the ongoing National-Identification (N-ID) Card and Health Card Project in Korea. The N-ID Card will be provided to all of the 37 million Korean adults over the age of 18 from the September 1999. Seven existing cards such as the personal identification card, the medical insurance card, the driver s licence card, and the social security card will be merged into a single IC Card by this project. Essential information from electronic patient records as well as medical insurance information will be included in this N-ID Card. In order to establish a successful country-wide implementation of this health card system, we have considered the security, privacy and confidentiality of private medical information. Contents access managing application software for each of the private information and a Java applet enabling cross-platform usability of the N-ID Card will be embedded in the N-ID Card. Both software technologies with the private key card role of the N-ID Card will secure access to medical information and efficient build-up of a health care networking system. The N-ID Card will act as a personal lifelong health care record which is expected to facilitate the standardization of medical information and the migration of a current hospital-based medical information system towards a patient-based one.