The purpose of this study was to investigate how life satisfaction levels and problem drinking areaffected by depression. The subjects were 873 middle-aged people who were experiencing problemdrinking out of the 3,926 middle-aged people who were selected for inclusion in the Fifth KoreanWelfare Panel Study[27]. The resulting data were analyzed with the statistical program AMOS 7.0for structural equation modeling. They were also analyzed with an Aroian test to measure mediatingeffects. The major findings were as follows: first, problem drinking was related to the experience ofdepression in both females and males, but only for the males was this result significant. Second, theexperience of depression was related to life satisfaction at a statistically significant level both infemales and males. Third, problem drinking was related to life satisfaction for both females andmales, but neither at significant levels. In other words, only in males was problem drinking relatedto the experience of depression while also being related to life satisfaction. In brief, in males, theexperience of depression was revealed to function as a mediator in the relationship between problemdrinking and life satisfaction.