An ideal  
 $I$  of a ring  
 $R$  is called a radical ideal if  
 $I\,=\,\mathcal{R}(R)$  where  
 $\mathcal{R}$  is a radical in the sense of Kurosh–Amitsur. The main theorem of this paper asserts that if  
 $R$  is a valuation domain, then a proper ideal  
 $I$  of  
 $R$  is a radical ideal if and only if  
 $I$  is a distinguished ideal of  
 $R$  (the latter property means that if  
 $J$  and  
 $K$  are ideals of  
 $R$  such that  
 $J\,\subset \,I\,\subset \,K$  then we cannot have  
 $I/J\,\cong \,K/I$  as rings) and that such an ideal is necessarily prime. Examples are exhibited which show that, unlike prime ideals, distinguished ideals are not characterizable in terms of a property of the underlying value group of the valuation domain.