To improve the life of a cemented carbide by refining or modifying the surface of a cemented carbide and also to improve the life of a surface- coated cemented carbide by applying a hard film to a surface-refined cemented carbide by the CVD or PVD method.

In this surface-refined cemented carbide, a surface-refined face is formed by means of machining and etching at least on one side of a cemented carbide which has a hard layer composed essentially of WC and a binding phase composed essentially of iron group metal. Further, when X-ray diffraction is applied to WC existing in the surface of the surface-refined face and to WC existing in the inner part of the cemented carbide, hs(001)WC/hs(101)WC≥1.2×hi(001)WC/hi(101)WC is satisfied when hs(001)WC and hs(101)WC represent the peak height of the (001) crystal plane of WC in the surface of the surface-refined face and the peak height of the (101) crystal plane, respectively, and also hi(001)WC and hi(101)WC represent the peak height of the (001) crystal plane of WC in the inner part of the cemented carbide and the peak height of the (101) crystal plane, respectively.