Standard CTD data processing recommended by Sea-Bird Electronics produced thermal-lag corrections larger than 0.1 psu for the data taken during the CREAMS expeditions in the northern part of the East/Japan Sea where a vertical temperature gradient frequently exceeds 1.0$^{circ}$C/m in the upper 100 m near the sea surface. As the standard processing is based upon a recursive filter which was introduced by Lueck and Pickle (1990), coefficients of the recursive filter have been newly derived for the CREAMS data by minimizing the difference between salinities of downcast and upcast in temperature-salinity domain. The new coefficients are validated by comparison with salinities measured by a salinometer, AUTOSAL 8400B. An accurate correction for the thermal-lag is critical in identifying water masses at intermediate depth in the East/japan Sea.