SNU-RCCS is a water pool type RCCS (Reactor Cavity Cooling System) developed for VHTR (Very High Temperature Reactor) application by SNU (Seoul National University). Since radiation heat transfer is the major process of passive heat removal in a RCCS, it is important to determine the precise emissivity of the reactor vessel. Review studies have used a constant emissivity in the passive heat removal analysis, even though the emissivity depends on many factors such as temperature, surface roughness, oxidation level, wavelength, direction, atmosphere conditions, etc. Therefore, information on the emissivity of a given material in a real RCCS is essential in order to properly analyze the radiation heat transfer in a VHTR. The objectives of this study are to develop a method for compensation of the factors affecting the emissivity measurement using an infrared thermometer and to estimate the true emissivity from the measured emissivity via the developed method, especially in the SNU-RCCS environment. From this viewpoint, we investigated factors such as the attenuation effect of the window, filling gas, and the effect of background radiation on the emissivity measurements. The emissivity of the vessel surface of the SNU-RCCS facility was then measured using a sight tube. The background radiation was subsequently removed from the measured emissivity by solving a simultaneous equation. Finally, the calculated emissivity was compared with the measured emissivity in a separate emissivity measurement device, yielding good agreement with the emissivity increase with vessel temperature in a range of 0.82 to 0.88.