Since 2004, a variety of cultural programs for the arts and literature have been developed in Korea through the use funding collected from the profits of the national lottery. The Lottery-funded Grants for the Arts and Cultural Welfare were established according to the ‘Lottery Tickets and Lottery Fund Act’ by the Lottery Commission at the Ministry of Strategy and Finance. As one of the funded programs, the Community Outreach Program through Traditional Culture was carried out over 2004 to 2011 for the public benefit as the Flexible Benefit Plan or Cafeteria Benefit Plan that focused on the traditional performing arts. It was presented and designed for neglected social groups such as economically under privileged social groups, senior citizens, multicultural citizens, and people living in remote areas. The primary goal was to promote cultural awareness and enjoyment through the arts. Not only did the community outreach program benefit these selected audiences, it also was of great benefit to the traditional performing artists as well as it brought them out of isolation and into the public view. The program received positive evaluation from the public for successfully attaining the goals reflecting the government policies in improving the quality of lives of the neglected social groups as well as providing the foundation for awakening the artistic creativity of the artists, arts community and cultural organizations. However, the presenters of the program from a number of quasi-government agencies have been questioning the ‘character of public interest’ defined by the Lottery Commission who tend to focus on external results rather than improving the quality of the program itself. In response to the reaction of the policies of the Lottery Commission, the presenters have been raising important issues that urge both rethinking and revision of the program. It also strives to maintain the original goal of improving the lives of marginalized and neglected socials groups through the reconsideration of the current policies. This paper investigates the concept of cultural welfare and examines the development phase of the cultural policies on the Lottery-funded Grants for the arts and cultural welfare. The article further explores the reevaluation of the true ‘character of public interest,’ its concept, and how to enhance the system of governance through the Community Outreach Program via the cultural programming of the traditional performing arts. Although the Community Outreach Program, which lasted for eight years, has been positively evaluated in contributing to the increase of the program’s audience members, the Community Outreach Program for neglected social groups is still under criticism due to shortcomings in actually improving the quality of the arts for the public. In other words a series of efforts have been made for acquiring the public aspects of the traditional performing arts as a public enterprise which was made possible by the Lottery-funded Grants for the Arts and Cultural Welfare. This is meaningful, on the one hand, in considering the facets of understanding the promotion of traditional performing arts as an area of cultural welfare. On the other hand, there still remains the question of targeting only the neglected social groups through programs such as the Flexible Benefit Plan, as opposed to being more inclusive with the general population in the area of general public welfare.