Objective: This paper aims to describe health promotion (HP) research according to HP activities, strategies, target population, and settings, and to explore challenges for HP to reflect principles and values. Methods: A content analysis was employed for all research reports funded by the Korea Health Promotion Foundation from 2005 to 2011. Content analysis was conducted according to the HP activities and strategies as mentioned in the Ottawa Charter, and by target population and setting. Challenges for HP research were explored by priority actions suggested by the International Union for Health Promotion and Education. Results: The total number of research was 384. The most popular topic was on HP actions for reorienting health services, followed by developing personal skills, creating supportive environments, building healthy public policy, and strengthening community actions. Research focusing on enabling strategies was most dominant among the HP strategies, while both advocating and mediating strategies were unlikely to be studied. An even distribution was found across target populations. The most popular setting was communities, followed by workplaces and schools. Conclusion: HP research tends to be anchored on bio-medical, individualized, and behavioral perspectives. A discussion was made to overcome this tendency by employing HP in social sciences theory and methods.