A horizontal drain method, which applies vacuum pressure at the end of a horizontal drain for discharging pore water, is used often for improving surface reclaimed clay in the field. In this study, to examine the effectiveness of improving consolidation or shear strength depends by varying vacuum pressure, laboratory chamber horizontal drain test using vacuum pressure is performed and the results is compared with that of self-weight consolidation. The results show that water content reduces with the increase of soil depth in case of self-weight consolidation, while it reduces near the horizontal drain and increases with the increase of the distance from the horizontal drain in case of applying vacuum pressure. The shear strength of dredged soil was improved as well, when the vacuum pressure is applied. The optimized consolidation was achieved at the vacuum pressure range of 30 to 50kPa in the laboratory box test of 50cm wide, considering the range of drain interval in the field was between 0.7 and 1.2m.