In order to investigate the characteristics of the plasma induced by lap-joint CO$_2$ laser welding of automotive steel sheets, the effects of welding speed, shield gas flow rate, gap size, and laser beam defocus to plasma intensity emitted from keyhole have been investigated. The plasma light is measured by fiber and photodiode. Also, the plasma images were captured by the high speed digital camera in 1000frames/sec in order to correlate the plasma light signal with plasma pattern. From the results, it is observed that the difference of the plasma intensity for between the deep penetration and partial penetration exists from 1.2 to 2 times. The plasma light intensity decreased in case of the deep penetration Is observed due to the exhausting of the plasma gas under the sheet. On the other hand, under the conditions of the deep penetration, the plasma intensity is significantly increased by controling the conditions decreasing the penetration depth. It was specially founded that the effect of 0.3mm gap size at partial penetration condition is approximately similar to deep penetration in 0mm gap. It is concluded that the plasma intensity is able to evaluate the penetration depth in lap-joint welding and appears to offer the most straightforward correlation to the welding process.