We study some fundamental properties of real rectifiable currents and give a generalization of King’s theorem and a real version of Harvey and Shiffman’s theorem in characterizing currents defined by holomorphic chains with real coefficients. The proof of the first case uses Siu’s semicontinuity theorem and we adopt the strategy of Alexander to prove the second case. These conclusions are applied to get some applications in complex geometry containing a sufficient condition for the Hodge conjecture and generalizations of some results of Harvey and Shiffman.