A study to replace a high temperature thermal carbonization process with microwave plasma process is carried for PAN fiber as a starting material. Near atmospheric pressure microwave plasma (1 Torr~45 Torr) was used to control to get the fiber temperature up to $1,000^{circ}C$. Even argon is an inert gas, its plasma state include high internal energy particles; ion (15.76 eV) and metastable (11.52 eV). They are very effective to lower the necessary thermal temperature for carbonization of PAN fiber and the resultant thermal budget. The carbonization process was confirmed by both EDS (energy dispersive spectroscopy) of plasma treated fibers and OES (optical emission spectroscopy) during processing step as a real time monitoring tool. The same trend of decreasing oxygen content was observed in both diagnostic methods.