Objective: Obesity is known to be associated with cardiovascular diseases and is a risk factor for all-cause mortality. Recent studies showed the U-shaped or J-shaped association between body mass index (BMI) and overall mortality. However, BMI has a limitation to measure abdominal obesity, and waist circumference (WC) is a powerful factor representing abdominal obesity. Until now the associations between abdominal obesity and mortality or cardiovascular events (CVE) are not conclusive. We aimed to evaluate the association between the WC and mortality or CVE in a general Korean population. Methods: We analyzed a total of 214,831 adults older than 30 years of age who had undergone a health examination from 2009 to 2015 in the Korean National Health Insurance Service Cohort. The WC was divided into five categories (<80, 80~84.9, 85~89.9, 90~94.9, ≥95 cm). Hazard ratios for death and CVE were calculated using Cox proportional hazards models after adjustment for age, smoking, and alcohol consumption status, levels of physical activity, total cholesterol, hypertension, and diabetes mellitus status. Results: In men, WC showed a reverse J-shaped association with overall mortality with lowest mortality rate among those with WC ≥95cm. In women, the association between WC and overall mortality was not significant. For both men and women, WC was not associated with the risk of cardiovascular mortality. Contrary to the mortality trend, CVE was positively associated with WC in both man and women, and the risk of the CVE was the lowest with a WC <80cm. Conclusion: WC was significantly associated with overall mortality in men with a reverse J-shaped association, where subjects who have central obesity showed the lower rate of mortality compared to the lowest WC group. The risk of CVE showed positivity association with central obesity, where the lowest risk was observed for subjects with the lowest WC group in a general Korean population.