 Paclitaxel has been also investigated as monotherapy and in combination with cisplatin in patients with advanced esophageal cancer. A Dutch phase II study demonstrated that paclitaxel combination with carboplatin had shown an encouraging confirmed response rate of 59 with 51 patients with resectable esophageal cancer in neoadjuvant setting. Another Dutch phase II study showed 43 of response rate including 4 of CR with 8 months of response duration when paclitaxel plus cisplatin administration was given for patients with metastatic esophageal cancer. Although recently first-line palliative chemotherapy regimen in esophageal cancer has been investigated, many trials have failed to show superiority to 5-FUcisplatin combination. Since we considered that XP or XT is more effective and convenient chemotherapy regimen than 5-FUcisplatin, this randomized phase II study was planned to compare XP with XT in terms of efficacy and tolerability. 