Korean ginseng is a medicinally important perennial herb from the family Araliaceae. It has been cultivated for its highly valued medicinal properties for over 1,000 years in east Asian countries such as China, Korea, and Japan. Due to its longtime cultivation in shady areas, ginseng is frequently exposed to pathogenic infections. Plants protect themselves from microbial pathogens using an array of defense mechanisms, some of which are constitutively active, while others are activated upon pathogen invasion. These induced defense responses, controlled by defense-related genes, require tradeoffs in terms of plant fitness. We hypothesize that ginseng, as with other plants, possesses regulatory mechanisms that coordinate the activation of attacker-specific defenses in order to minimize fitness costs while attaining optimal resistance. Several classes of defense-related genes are induced by infection, wounds, irradiation, and other abiotic stresses. Both salicylates and jasmonates have been shown to cause such responses, although their specific roles and interactions in signaling and development are not fully understood in ginseng. This review summarizes possible defense-related genes in ginseng based on their expression patterns against biotic and abiotic stresses and describes their functional roles.