A business cycle is recognized as a growth cycle in a continuously growing economy such as Korea. This paper suggests reasonable dating rules for the reference date of a business cycle using various measures of a growth cycle. These measures are a cyclical component of the coincident composite index (CI), a coincident cumulative diffusion index, and a historical diffusion index with coincident component indicators. Dating rules include identifying turning points based on these measures of the growth cycle, and various approaches which confirm and review whether these turning points are appropriate for reference dates. And the dating rules are backed up by an administrative process to determine and disseminate these turning points as the reference dates of growth cycles in Korea. The process provides a strategy that gives authority to the released reference dates and minimises errorsin the dating. However, these dating rules have strict procedures to determine the reference date because the measures of a growth cycle are revised annually and their turning points could be affected by their revisions. Usually, a new reference date requires approximately three years before it is released officially. Due to the delayed dating strategy, the present and future business conditions need to be reviewed by detecting and forecasting models of the coming turning points with leading indexes and coincident indexes.