There have been numerous attempts at finding factors associated with profitability among hospitals in the Republic of Korea. Factors that have been shown to be related to hospital profitability have not yet been systematically reviewed. The purpose of this study was to compile and summarize published works investigating the factors associated with hospital profitability in the Republic of Korea. We searched Research Information Sharing Service, Korea studies Information Service System, Database Periodical Information Academic, Korean Medical Database, KoreaMed, and Google Scholar from 1980 to November 2013. In addition, we manually searched reference lists from eligible studies. Review of 20 peer-reviewed articles revealed that very few of the variables employed in the eligible studies exerted consistent association with profitability, with the exception of personal cost (i.e., employee salaries). Future studies should take our findings into consideration before conducting research on hospital profitability.