Line to ground faults by deterioration of insulators has frequently occurred in power system, and the main cause is surface contamination of the insulators. The contamination of insulator is analyzed by monitoring the surface leakage current flowing them. The suspension insulator is monitored by installation of a zero-phase current sensor(ZCT), but the line-post insulator is impossible to apply the same method because of its large diameter structure. This paper proposed a detection method of surface leakage current for a line-post insulator, and it can easily be applied to new and/or built insulators. The leakage current is indirectly calculated from the potential difference between the metal electrode attached on the surface of insulator and the ground connector. To evaluate the performance of the proposed method, the leakage current is compared as a function of contamination condition controlled by the density of NaCl solution. The leakage current is proportioned to the density of NaCl solution, and the voltage detected by the electrode showed the same trend. From the experimental results, we designed and fabricated a monitoring device which is composed of a detection electrode, signal converter, microprocessor, and ZigBee, and its measurement range is $10{mu}A{sim}5mA$.