Background and Objectives : Thyroid carcinoma is the sixth commonest cancer in Korea and the papillary carcinoma is the most common type(88%) of the malignant thyroid tumors. Bulky DNA adducts formed by the carcinogens are repaired by DNA repair process, but failure to repair this DNA damage can cause mutations in oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes resulting in tumor formation. The xeroderma pigmentosum group C(XPC) gene is essential for this repair procedure and the XPC-PolyAT(PAT) polymorphisms may alter DNA repair capacity(DRC) and genetic susceptibility to cancer. Subjects and Methods : In a case-control study of 113 Korean patients with pathologically diagnosed thyroid papillary carcinoma and 65 control subjects, we investigated the association between the three XPC-PAT gene polymorphisms and thyroid papillary cancer susceptibility. Results : The frequency of the variant XPC-PAT allele was lower in the cases(0.349) than in the controls (0.423), but the difference was not significant(p=0.140). Using logistic regression adjusting for age and sex, risk for thyroid papillary cancer was not increased in the XPC-PAT-/+ and XPC-PAT+/+ compared to XPCPAT-/-(adjusted overall odds ratio[95% confidence intervals;95%CI]=0.52[0.26-1.03] and 0.62 [0.22-1.75], respectively; trend test, p=0.167). Conclusion : There are no relationship between the XPC-PAT polymorphism and the risk of thyroid papillary carcinoma in Korean population. Based on our results, XPC-PAT polymorphism do not modulate genetic susceptibility to thyroid papillary cancer.