This article examines current social issues and welfare needs in South Korea and discusses societal efforts to respond to these needs through social welfare systems nationwide. It also reviews how social work scholars, major contributors to the creation of a Korean welfare state, have contributed to the conditions of social work practice by detailing both the profile of social work research and the characteristics of social work publication. In response to the call for Korean social work practice to lay a culturally relevant foundation for empirically based practice, the authors particularly emphasize the various roles of a university-based research center and propose that the center's academic and policy level contributions be considered to help develop a unique model that the Korean welfare systems must apply in a global era. (Contains 3 tables.)