Background: Stroke is well known one of the major causes of death in adults. In the incidence of type of stroke, the cerebral infarction occured more frequently than the cerebral hemorrhage in the Western, but the incidence varies with the individual clinical studies in Korea. We expect that there is changing pattern in the incidence of type of stroke during the recent 10 years in Korea. Methods: To investigate the changing pattern of stroke during the recent 10 years, 1304 patients with stroke who underwent the computerized tomographic scanning were evaluated for the type of stroke, the sex and age distribution, the underlying diseases and the location. Group I included 450 pateints with stroke who admitted from January 1978 to October 1981, at department of internal medicine, Kyung Hee University Hospital. Group II included S54 patients with stroke who admitted from January 1989 to December 1989. Results: Cerebral hemorrhage was the most frequent type of stroke in group I, but cerebral infarction in group II. Male was more prevalent than female in cerebral hemorrhage and cerebal infarction in both groups. The subarachnoid hemorrhage more frequently occurred in female than in male. It was a tendency to increase the frequency in females in group II including all types of stroke. Cerebral hemorrhage occurred most frequently in sixth decade in both groups, but cerebral infarction occurred most frequently in sixth decade in group I and seventh decade in group II. In both groups, hypertension was the most frequent associated disease. The proportion of diabetes mellitus and heart diseases increased in group II than group I. The level of serum total cholesterol in patients with cerebral infarction was higher than those with cerebral hemorrhage in group II. In cerebral infarction, the most frequent lesion site was lobal area. In cerebral hemorrhage, basal ganglia was the most frequent lesion site, the second was thalamus and then subcortical area. Conclusions: These results suggest that the cerebral infarction is the most frequent type in the stroke in Korea recently due to increased population with old age, increased incidence of diabetes mellitus and heart diseases, the adequate control of hypertension and changes of life style and diets.