OBJECTIVES: Little is known about the health-related quality of life (HRQoL) for rheumatoid arthritis (RA) in Korean population. Several studies discovered quality of life of RA patients in Korea using localized resources, not nationwide one. The aim of this study is to estimate HRQoL of Korean RA patients and also discover education and treatment status of them based on nationally representative data. METHODS: This study is a cross-sectional analysis of adults who participated in 4^th (2007-2009) and 5^th (2010-2012) Korean National Health and Nutritional Examination Survey (total 50,405 participants). HRQoL was measured by EuroQol five-dimension (EQ-5D) and its mean score in Korean RA patients was compared with the general population. Multivariate linear regression was performed at p-value of 0.05 with the use of SAS software, version 9.2. RESULTS: Among 50,405 participants 961 participants (1.6%) have suffered from RA, of the 37% (339 patients) being treated and only 4.6% (35 patients) being educated in arthritis. The mean age of diagnosis is 46.6. RA patients have a significantly lower mean EQ-5D score compared to that of the general population in Korea (0.87 and 0.93, respectively; p-value<0.001) after controlling for age, sex, body mass index (BMI), education, house income, marital status, smoking, and alcohol. Compared EQ-5D score of RA patients who were in treatment to those not in treatment, no statistically significant difference was found. CONCLUSIONS: Less than 40% of RA patients have been treated and only about 5% educated about their disease. RA is found to be negatively related with HRQoL in Korea population based on nationwide data. This study provides nationwide information on RA: education and treatment status of RA patients as well as difference of HRQoL scores between RA patients and non-RA patients in Korea.