Currently in Korea, standard operating procedure for the analyses of phenolic compounds in water is the spectrometric comparison of colors developed by 4-amino antipyrin with phenolic compounds. It is however that this method cannot identify individual compound and that some phenolic compounds do not react with 4-amino antipyrin. Spectrometric determinations of phenolic compounds were compared with chromatographic analyses of gas chromatography (GC) and high pressure liquid chromatography (HPLC) of various phenolic compounds. Individual phenolic compounds could be determined by both chromatographic methods but HPLC methods were more precise with lower detection levels in general.