An apparatus and a method for acquiring a code group that is used for a mobile communication terminal to acquire a scrambling code for identification of a base station. The present invention compares a part of slot values in code groups of the secondary synchronization channel transmitted to a mobile communication terminal from a base station with a part of code groups already known and, when there is a code group having a value higher than a predetermined value, reads code groups having the same pattern as that of the code group having a value higher than the predetermined value, which are previously stored in a predetermined storage. Then, the present invention excludes the read code groups from operations to reduce the quantity of unnecessary operations. Accordingly, the number of code groups to be compared for correlation operations is remarkably decreased. The present invention intelligently uses characteristics of code groups already known to considerably reduce the time required for acquiring the code group, compared to the conventional method that sequentially compares all of code groups or compares a part of slot values of code group candidates and tracks candidates having values exceeding a threshold. Therefore, unnecessary power consumption is prevented such that the power of a battery of a mobile communication terminal is not unnecessarily consumed. Furthermore, prompt cell search can be supported in case of hand-off.