The level of health perception and heath behavior are highly relared to the level of a peson's quality of life. The pupose of this study was to identify the relationship of perceived knowledge of health and health behavior being practiced in daily life in the rural elderly. The subjects of this study were 62 male and 421 femeale elderly, over the age of 60 registeredand managed in S-Gun Medical Center which ux located in Chonnam Province, Korea. The data were collected from September thrrough November, 1999. The instuments used in this study were the health assessments tool for the aged, developed by Choi and Kim(1997)and the life satisfaction scale developed by Diener, et, al. (1985). The data were analyxed by using desciptive statistics, t-test, person correlation coefficients ANOVA and stepwise multiple regression. The results of this study are as follows; 1. Individual health behavior showed a significant positive correlation with gender, age, occupation, family type, education level, religion. The level of health behavior practice was high in the elderly who were younger, educated highly, male, religious, employed and living together with family members. 2. Quality of life showed significant positive correlation with gender, age, occupation, family type, education level, religious, employed and living together with family members. 3. individual general health behaviors are statistically correlated with individual health perception. The more perception about health on physiscal, emotional, social, spiritual aspects, the higher practice of health behavior. 4. Quality of life is statistically correlated with the practice of health behavior in physiscal, emotional, social, spiritual and general aspects. Especiacally, individual health behaviors related to emotional aspects which were characterized by 'having spent a day joyfully' and 'having a quiet and easy life ' showed a high correlation with individual quality of life. 5. factor analysis revealed that the practice of health behavior related to emotional aspects(24.7%) significantly influenced the quality of life. In cinclusion, the result of this study show that emotional aspects are more important than order aspects(physical, social and spiritual aspects). THerefore, nursing needs to the health promotion program in order to improve the quality of life for korean rural elderly.