Purpose: This study was to scrutinize not merely the nomenclature of clinical competency suggested in nursing literature but also what core clinical competency nursing students should be focused on for improving competency-based curriculum. Methods: A comprehensive review on 69 domestic and 89 foreign related literature was conducted. After reviewing the full text of a total of 158 articles, only 23 articles with measurement tools were selected for scrutinizing while 135 articles with obscure definitions of clinical competency were excluded. Results: Clinical competencies including 120 concepts were identified. Those concepts were categorized as 30 clinical competencies according to their similarities. Seven core clinical competencies including 1)nursing knowledge, 2)nursing skill, 3)interpersonal skill/cooperation, 4)problem-solving, 5)professionalism, 6)nursing management/leadership and 7)research ability were derived from the 30 clinical competencies through the categorizing process. Conclusion: Teaching & learning strategies should focus on the integration of nursing theories and clinical practices based on competency-based curriculum considering the 7 core clinical competencies. Nonetheless, they include somewhat abstract concepts and some were not concrete enough to be applied to the nursing curriculum. Thus, further research is needed in order to develop consensus-driven clinical competencies and competency modeling which can suggest the interrelation between the core competencies.