Neck mass as a primary presenting sign is a common problem that physicians and surgeons alike have to face but conclusive diagnosis cna be made only by histopathological examination. During the period of four years from January 1988 to December 1991, three hundred sixteen diagnostic incisional or excisional biopsies of the neck masses were performed at the outpatient department of Surgery, Seoul National University Hospital and tissue diagnoses were confirmed by histopatholotical examination. On which a clinical analysis was performed and its results were compared with the results of one hundred fifteen Fine Needle Aspiration Cytologic examinations on neck masses during the same period. The results were as follows: In the histologic types of neck masses. inflammatory disease was the most common (58.2%), metastatic malignant tumor(22.5%), benign tumor(15.2%). primary malignant tumor(0.4%) in decreasing order. Among the individual lesions. tuberculous lymphadenitis was the most common(29.4%) and nonspecific lymphadenitis was the next. Of overall sexual distribution, female preponderated by a ratio of 1.15:1, but in the primary and metastatic malignancies, male did by a ratio of 1.60:1 and 1.53:1, respectively. The most common age group was third decade(26.8%), and fourth decade was the next(20.9%) but in malignant tumors. sixth decade was the most commom. The duration of symptom between one and three months(33.8%), was the most common and between three and six month was the next but the difference between the individual diseases was not significant. Of the metastatic tumor of seventy one cases, primary site was found in fifty cases(84.2%) and stomach cancer was the most comon primary site. In the result of the Fine Needle Aspiration Cytologic(FNAC) examinations, positive for mlignant cells was the most common(33.1%), following the frequencies with tuberculosis(22.6%), and nonspecific lymphadenitis(16.5%) in decreasing order. Eleven cases of FNAC underwent diagnostic biopsies and the diagnostic accuracy of FNAC was 83.3%. Conclusively, in our study, tuberculous lymphadenitis was the most common histologic type, female was predominant third decade was the most common age group. the duration of symptom between one and three month was the most common and in the metastatic tumors, stomach cancer was the most common primary site.