Antitumor effects of various teas have been studied for a long time. Among them, green tea is one of the most popular test and very close to our lives in Korea. However, precise effect and mechanism about antitumor effects of green tea were not estabilished. The present study investigated the antitumor effect of catechin, which is main component of green tea, which was produced in Korea, was used. In each group, morphological changes were observed induced severe cell damage and growth inhibition gradually until 24hours. Then catechin effect was found to be concentration-and time-dependent. EATC was injured abruptly at 100ug/ml catechin treatment for 6 hours and the effect lasted constantly until 24 hours. But in both of cell lines, cell damage and inhibition of proliferation did not show up apparently at concentration of 10 and 1ug/ml. In contrast, catechin led to little or no effect against HepG2 in all of concentrations and periods. These results suggest that catechin extracted from green tea had different effect on cancer cells as cell type, concentration and period. Therefore green tea would be helpful to cancer treatment as well as cancer prevention and this study would be the basic source for further research of green tea.