Periodontal pocket is one of the most frequently developed clinical feature on the teeth with periodontal disease. In order to determine the gingival curettage effect of intrapocket irradiation of a pulsed Nd : YAG laser on periodontally involved teeth, bilateral 60 teeth with $4{sim}6mm$ in probing pocket depth 1 week after supragingival scaling were selected. On half of them the intrapocket irradiation($300{mu}m$ fiber optic, 1.5W power, for 2min.) of a pulsed-Nd : YAG laser(EL.EN.EN06O, Italy) was applied as the lased group. On the contralateral 30 teeth the subgingival curettage was accomplished by Gracey curettes as the curattage group. The periodontal pocket tissues were surgically excised by the modified Widman flap technique immediately after the intrapocket irradiation or subgingival curettage, subsequently fixed with 10% neutral formalin, sectioned in $4{sim}6{mu}m$ thickness, and stained with hematoxylin-eosin. Surface characteristics and incomplete removal of the pocket epithelium were evaluated under light microscope. And the difference between the lased group and the curettage group was statistically analyzed by Chi-square test in Microstat program. The results were as follows ; 1. The plane surface was observed more frequently in the curettage group(73.3%) than in the lased group(23.3%), and the rough surface was observed more frequently in the lased grOoup(63.3%) than in the curettage group(6.7%)(p<0.05). 2. The rate of incomplete removal of the pocket epithelium was relatively high in both the lased group(76.6%) and the curettage group(86.6%), and there was no significant difference between the lased group and the curettage group(p>0.l). The results suggest that the further studies including various power control of laser should be succeeded in order to obtain more favorable results by the intrapocket irradiation of a pulsed Nd:YAG laser than the subgingival curettage with Gracey curettes.