Because with the recent satellite missions CHAMP and GRACE several new global gravity models were released, considerable improvements of our knowledge of the long-wavelength part of the Earth's gravity field were made. For example, the development of a new Earth Gravitational model (EGM) to degree 2160 was finished by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) of the USA in 2008. For the computation of a precise gravimetric geoid model for Korea we need a new investigation on the choice of the best and optimal geopotential model including this EGM2008 for the combined solution with local gravimetric and topographic data using the remove-restore technique. In this paper, an analysis was carried out to define the geopotential model, which fits best the local gravity field in Korea. Nine global geopotential models for the twelve cases which were released after 1990's are used in this study : The latest high degree model EGM2008, new GRACE satellite-only and combined models ITG-GRACE03S and GGM02C and GGM02C, combined CHAMP and GRACE model EIGEN-CG03C, combined CHAMP and LAGEOS model EIGEN-GL04C, PGM2000A and OSU91A and EGM96. The test of the fitting of these high order geopotential models to the gravity field in Korea is based on the precise GPS data collected from the Korean Geographical Information Institute (KGII). The comparisons were made at all GPS levelled data by computation of the geoid differences. The geopotential model that provides the closest statistical fit to GPS/leveling data can be assumed to be the most suitable model to adopt for the determination of the new Korean gravimetric geoid. The study shows that the newly released combined model EGM2008 to degree 2160 is consistently superior to other models in the Korean penonsula. Its standard deviation fit with GPS/levelling data is 14.0 cm and 13.6 cm before and afte rlinear trend removing.