Minimally invasive surgery and laparoscopic surgery have been used for more than 30 years, and are now popular even for some malignant diseases. There have been two developments in technology; one is robotic surgery and the other is less minimally invasive surgery like natural orifice transluminal endoscopic surgery (NOTES) and single port laparoscopic surgery. NOTES, using the current platform of a conventional fiberscope and side channel instruments for surgery, suffers many limitations, including image quality, flexibility of the fiberscope, size of the side channel, and difficulty of closing the opening. Due to the above-mentioned limitations, single port laparoscopic surgery has many advantages over. This review aims to define single port laparoscopic surgery and describe its terminology and technology. To perform single port laparoscopic surgery efficiently, new instruments (e.g., a laparoscopic camera, ports, laparoscopic instruments) and combining other innovative methods into surgery are both helpful. Even though there have been many developments in laparoscopic cameras, ports, and laparoscopic instruments to enhance single port laparoscopic surgery, further improvements are needed. Motorized instruments or using a robotic platform in combination with single port laparoscopic surgery will be another way to overcome the limitations of current single port laparoscopic surgery. Single port laparoscopic surgery is a technique that has recently emerged, but will be performed in a wider range of surgical procedures based on developments in laparoscopic cameras, ports and laparoscopic instrument technology.