The work roll surface temperature rises and falls repetitively during hot slab rolling because the work roll surface is cooled continuously by water. This study focused on Std. No. 7 to determine a cooling method which significantly reduces the tangential tensile stresses on the work roll surface of the hot slab mill at Hyundai Steel Co. in Korea. A series of finite element analyses were performed to compute the temperature distribution and the tensile stresses in the circumferential direction of the work roll. The virtual slab model was used to reduce the run time considerably by assigning a high temperature to the virtual slab. Except for the heat generated by plastic deformation, this is equivalent to the hot rolling condition that a high temperature slab (material) would experience when in contact with the work rolls. Results showed that when the virtual slab model was coupled with FE analysis, the run time was found to be reduced from 2000 hours to 70 hours. When the work roll surface cooled with a certain on-off patter of water spray, the magnitude of the tangential stresses on the work rolls were decreased by 54.1%, in comparison with those cooled by continuous water spraying. Savings of up to 83.3% in water usage are possible if the proposed water cooling method is adopted.