Magnesium Oxide (MgO) with a NaCl structure is known to exhibit high secondary electron emission, excellent high temperature chemical stability, high thermal conductance and electrical insulating properties. MgO films are very useful as a buffer layer for the deposition of high Tc superconducting and perovskite-type ferroelectric films, and as a protective layer for AC-plasma display panels to improve discharge characteristics and panel lifetime. For these purposes, the deposition and characteristics of the MgO films have been intensively studied by means of E-beam evaporation, Molecular Beam Epitaxy (MBE) and Metalorganic Chemical Vapor Deposition (MOCVD). However, there have been some limitations such as low deposition rate, micro-cracks during deposition process, and high erosion rate caused by ion bombardment in the glow discharge of AC-PDP. To improve these drawbacks MgO films were deposited on the dielectric substrates by pulsed DC magnetron sputtering with Mg and MgO targets. We have investigated the plasma states with various pulsed DC conditions, partial oxygen pressure and the deposition temperatures by Langmuir probe and Optical Emission Spectroscopy (OES). In order to confirm the relationships between plasma states and film properties deposition rate, microstructure, surface morphology, and composition were analyzed by α-step profilometer, XRD, TEM, AFM, and XPS.