During the past decade or so in Korea, 119 relief squad members were supposed to respord first urgent or emergency cases. The primary purpose of this study was to assess what levels of knowledge and techniques in prehospital care the 119 relief squad members showed. Data regarding the knowledge and technique levels were collected from both the 119 relief squad members (n=63) and the emergency room nurses(n=46). The Results indicated that the 119 relief squad when compared to emergency nurses, showed higher scores for knowledge and techniques in some areas of prehospital care but not in other areas, However, no differences in knowledge and technique were found when the ANOVAs were calculated with two covariates : duration of their career in emergency medical services and frequency of their exposure to lectures on emergency medical technology. In addition, many respondents in the 119 relief squad group rated themselves poorly in knowledge and techniques of prehospital care, The findings imply that qualitatively better curricula should be given to the 119 relief squad members before they are allowed to play an important role in the emergency medical service system. These findings are also discussed in the context of improving the emergency medical service system.