The current status of atmospheric environmental impact assessment (EIA) has been summerized and future prospective for effective and accurate atmospheric EIA has been proposed by reviewing available papers and reports for the atmospheric EIA. The number of reports for the EIA in the EIA support system which is operated by the Korean Environmental Institute have been dramatically decreased from 282 reports in 2008 to 113 reports in 2012 during recent five years. This is partially due to simplification of the EIA procedure, the contraction of the public development and economic recession. We analyzed details of the EIA report to review how actual atmospheric EIA has preformed according to the EIA guidelines from the Korean Ministry of Environment. The 264 reports of EIA published in 2011 and 2012 had been reviewed especially focusing on the atmospheric evaluation items such as meteorology, air quality measurement and modeling, odor measurement and modeling, wind corridor in urban planning, and climate change. In overall sense, the atmospheric EIA has been performed quite well by abiding the guidelines except for local meteorological data measurement, permit standard for air quality and wind corridor. The new approaches to improve the procedure of atmospheric EIA and to reflect future of national air quality standard of $PM_{2.5}$ have been proposed. The guidelines on how to evaluate the wind corridor, to implement atmospheric EIA for $PM_{2.5}$ permit, and how to acquire local meteorological data by combining local measurement and model prediction are required for the effective and future oriented atmospheric EIA.