Disclosed is a medium recognition apparatus for determining the type of a medium by using color information obtained by scanning the inserted medium, as well as a method for determining the type of a medium by using the apparatus. Color information and size information obtained by scanning only a partial region of a medium image, the hue of the medium image scanned by the image sensor, or RGB channel color information scanned by the color sensor is compared with pre-stored reference information to determine the type of the medium. This guarantees that the type of the medium is determined quickly and accurately based on simple comparing results.