The household survey was performed in a urban slum and a rural Chonnam areas to measure the level of illness and medical care utilization and to find the determinants of physician utilization. The data revealed that age-adjusted prevalence rates of acute and chronic diseases were much the same in both areas ranged between 10.0 to 11.3%. But medical care utilization was more frequent in urban slum than in rural area. The facility of the first medical contact was also different. Some personal and disease related variables including disease severity and activity restricted day were significantly, but somewhat differently by area, associated with physician utilization pattern. When applying Anderson model, the medical need factors explained 42.2 and 40.4% of physician utilization in urban slum and in rural areas respectively, while the enabling factors explained 18.0 and 12.2% and the predisposing facotrs explained 17.1 and 8.9% correspondingly.