Efficiency alone cannot be a correct measure of the well-being of a pharmaceutical industry due to rapid technical progress. The rapid technical progress may result in lower efficiency even if DMUs were increasingly productive over time. This paper examines the productivity changes in Korean pharmaceutical companies for the period of 2001-2005 by MPI(Malmquist Productivity Index). DEA(Data Envelopment Analysis) is employed to estimate the production frontier. MPI is broken down into ΔPTE, ΔSE, and ΔTECH. According to the results, ΔTECH and ΔPTE have jointly led to a decrease in productivity, while ΔSE have contributed to an increase in productivity.