The fibrous raw materials in packaging-grade paper production in Korea were mainly obtained from waste paper. The use of recycled paper has both positive and negative impacts in papermaking process. The primary positive impacts are the environmental protection and manufacturing cost reduction, and the negative impacts are the quality reduction in paper quality and the accumulation of heavy metals and other pollutants in wet- and dry-end process. This study was carried out to consider the optimum acid decomposition system with the highest recovery rate for the analysis of heavy metals in packaging-grade paper. The open digestion system using Kjeldahl apparatus and the closed digestion system using microwave oven for decomposing the organic materials in paper were compared. In both open and closed digestion method, the combination of nitric acid, hydrochloric acid and hydrogen peroxide showed higher recovery rate than using only nitric acid alone because the presence of Cl- ions in hydrochloric acid stabilizes ligand formation with metal ions. KOCC was observed to have the highest heavy metal content among the recycled paper samples. The heavy metal contents decomposed with the closed digestion system were relatively higher than with open digestion system.