The aim of this review is to investigate clinical studies on oriental medicine treatment for obesity in Korean literature and to propose for the better method of clinical studies in order to seek more effective treatment. Electric searches were performed with NDSL, National assembly library, RISS4U, DBPIA, KISS, KMBASE, KoreaMed, Korean traditional knowledge portal and Oasis. Also, 21 major journals associated with oriental medicine in Korea were searched manually. Eighty three studies were included and analyzed in terms of study design, subjects, interventions, results and evaluation of safety. The numbers of controlled, non-controlled and case studies are respectively 26(31%), 43(52%) and 14(17%). Studies using sample size less than 30 accounts for 49% and studies using subjects diagnosed as obese or overweight by specific criteria were 35(42%). Studies which used more than 2 interventions or co-interventions were 76%. Clinical studies which used single herbal medicine were few and clinically studied single herbal medicine were limited to ephedra. More than half of 83 studies were studied for 8 weeks and less. 12% of 69 studies(except case studies) were not statistically analyzed and studies which evaluated safety of intervention were 22(27%) and reported adverse events were 9(11%). To improve the quality of clinical studies on oriental medicine treatment for obesity, studies need to use restricted number of interventions and subjects need to specifically diagnosed as overweight or obese. In addition, various kinds of single herbs need to be clinically studied based on experimental studies and herbalogy.