A levee height is determined by adding a deterministic freeboard to a flood water level in Korea. In the USA, a levee height is determined by choosing a value conditionally among the freeboard criteria and the levels resulted from a probabilistic method. The probabilistic method adopts a conditional non-exceedance probability (CNP) which is the probability that the target stage will not be exceeded given a specific flood event. The purpose of the study is to compare Korean criterion for levee height estimation with that of the USA. Levee heights were determined according to the above two criteria at twenty-five cross sections in five streams. The results show that Korean criterion on average yields levee heights 20 cm higher than those calculated by the criterion of the USA. The larger the flood discharges become, the higher the levee height differences are usually. It is caused by the freeboard estimation criterion of Korea that the larger design flood is, the higher freeboard is given. Korean criterion, however, resulted in lower levee heights for smaller streams than those by the criterion of the USA. To sum it up, the Korean levee height criteria can result in overestimation or underestimation depending on flood discharge amount, being compared with the criteria of the USA. The Korean freeboard especially needs to be increased for smaller flood discharges.