A detailed investigation has been reformed on the thermal characteristics of 28 Korean anthracite coals. The proximate, ultimate and marceral constituents characterizing their chemical and petrographic prop-erties were analysed. The coals were partitioned into four groups in accordance with the linearity of Arrhe-nius plots and the weighted mean activation energy were calculated. By examining the data obtained, it was possible to show the existence of good correlations between the VM/FC, (C+H)/O and C/H, but it was not possible to detect particular trends with regard to PT(Peak Temperature)and BT(Burn-out Tem-perature)deduced from burning profiles. It was found that the PT and BT cannot be used as an indices to describe the combustion characteristics of coals having identical rank(especially for anthacite). For the whole set of coals, telocollonite belonging to vitrinite marceral group has the highest correlation coefficient with activation energy. Although both the telocollonite and the desmocollinite belong to vitrinite marceral group, each marceral exert opposite effect on activation energy and the activation energy increased as the total inertinite contents increased. The differences in sulfur content, VM/FC ratio, marceral and activation energy in each groups are compared by using the frequency distribution analysis.