The purpose of this study was to suggest the academic roles and direction of the successful aging in journal papers. For this purpose the trends of research on the successful aging were analyzed by means of reviewing articles published from 2002 to 2012 in journal papers of korea. Data were collected by using keyword library database. 86 papers was to analyze to find out overall the research streaming of theme, method and subject. As results, there were increased considerably the number of research in successful aging every year. Secondly, the study of successful aging had been performed more in social welfare. The research trends had focused on the successful aging, but the research had some limitations in simply introducing the definition and general plan.