In this study we evaluated the hydrological applicability of multi-satellite precipitation estimates. Three high-resolution global multi-satellite precipitation products, the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Multi-satellite Precipitation Analysis (TMPA), the Global Satellite Mapping of Precipitation (GSMaP), and the Climate Precipitation Center (CPC) Morphing technique (CMORPH), were applied to the Coupled Routing and Excess Storage (CREST) model for the evaluation of their hydrological utility. The CREST model was calibrated from 2002 to 2005 and validated from 2006 to 2009 in the Chungju Dam watershed, including two years of warm-up periods (2002-2003 and 2006-2007). Areal-averaged precipitation time series of the multi-satellite data were compared with those of the ground records. The results indicate that the multi-satellite precipitation can reflect the seasonal variation of precipitation in the Chungju Dam watershed. However, TMPA overestimates the amount of annual and monthly precipitation while GSMaP and CMORPH underestimate the precipitation during the period from 2002 to 2009. These biases of multi-satellite precipitation products induce poor performances in hydrological simulation, although TMPA is better than both of GSMaP and CMORPH. Our results indicate that advanced rainfall algorithms may be required to improve its hydrological applicability in South Korea.