An apparatus and method of performing a stable pause motion of an optical pickup over an optical disk which has both an occupied area and an unoccupied area. Start addresses and end addresses of occupied areas on the optical disk are stored. When the optical pickup is over an unoccupied area, a pause-on command to maintain a current location of the optical pickup is issued. The optical pickup is moved to an end address of an occupied area being the closest to an address where the optical pickup is placed at the moment when the pause-on command is issued. Accordingly, the optical pickup stably pauses over the optical disk having both an occupied area and an unoccupied area.