Seismic design for bridge columns of the current Korea Highway Bridge Design Specifications which adopt full ductility design concept results in reinforcement congestion problems in construction site. It is due to large amount of confining steel is required even for small ductility demand which is a normal case in low and moderate seismicity regions like Korean peninsular. Therefore a new seismic design method based on limited ductility concept was proposed, which is called ductility demand based design method. It uses the new confining steel design equation considering ductility demand and aspect ratio of the column as well as material strength. The purpose of this study is to verify safety of the ductility demand based design method by the confining steel design equation. Eighty nine circular column test results are selected and investigated in terms of ductility factor and its safety. The safety factor for the circular column test results ranges between 1.11 and 3.98, and the average is 1.90. In this paper, the basic concept and detailed design procedure of the ductility demand based design method are also introduced as well as the investigation of the safety with respect to the major variables in confining steel design.