This paper aims first to figure out the features of welfare politics during Park Jung Hee era, and then to understand the effects that they had on welfare reforms since democratization. In particular, anticommunism and economic developmentalism, state corporatism, Park`s leadership are explained as three main pillars that combined to constitute the features of welfare politics during Park`s era. And those features include fiscal conservatism, dependence on self-welfare in the private sphere, the low level of welfare, the lack of labor-inclusiveness, democratic deficit in the welfare design, selective and residual welfare system. Finally, this paper argues that most of those features as the legacy of welfare politics during Park`s era have managed to survive to this day, restricting drastic reforms of welfare system. Finally, it is hoped that this paper will contribute to a more detailed and comprehensive evaluation of Park`s era, and help reflecting on the historicity of Korean welfare politics for the sake of a more democratic and substantial design of the current welfare system.