Information of local solar radiation is essential for many field, including water resources management, crop yield estimation, crop growth model, solar energy systems and irrigation and drainage design. Unfortunately, solar radiation measurements are not easily available due to the cost and maintenance and calibration requirements of the measuring equipment and station. Therefore, it is important to elaborate methods to estimate the solar radiation based on readily available meteorological data. In this study, two empirical equations are employed to estimate daily solar radiation using Cheongju Regional Meteorological Office data. Two scenarios are considered: (a) sunshine duration data are available for a given location, or (b) only daily cloudiness index records exist. Simple linear regression with daily sunshine duration and cloudiness index as the dependent variable accounted for 91% and 80%, respectively of the variation of solar radiation(H) at 2011. Daily global solar radiation is highly correlated with sunshine duration. In order to indicate the performance of the models, the statistical test methods of the mean bias error(MBE), root mean square error(RMSE) and correlation coefficient(r) are used. Sunshine duration and cloudiness index can be easily and reliably measured and data are widely available.