Community involvement is to be the keystone of primary health care, Unfortunately, efforts to promote it failed in many countries. Author inquired into the reasons why such efforts fail, and the alternative strategies for effectively promoting it in Korean situation today. In doing so, the concept of community involvement is clarified as an amalgamation of two different concepts; one is that of the community development, and the other is that of approaches for overcoming the alienation of the people from the health care process. Stategies of community involvement in Korea so far followed the line of the community development, e.g. village health worker. It loses, however, the feasibility as Korea has experinced so cial and economic developpment. The strategies of the second line of thought is now more feasible; empowering the people by providing more information and enhancing comitment to health, improving acceptabilty of community involvemt on the part of the health professionals and the bureaucrats, and building the mechanism of community involvement into the health policy-making process.