In South Korea, 282 thousand tons of pears were produced in 2013, making it the third most produced fruit after citrus fruits (649 thousand tons) and apples (494 thousand tons). Moreover, pears constitute the largest proportion of fruit exports with 18 thousand tons of export volume (KREI, 2014). Of the many pear varieties, ‘Niitaka (Pyrus pyrifolia Nakai)’ pears feature excellent quality and cold storage and are thereby known as a promising pear variety for export. Thus, they account for approximately 83% of the total cultivated area in South Korea. They are an extensively consumed food for ancestral rites; in particular, pears are mostly consumed on the Korean Thanksgiving Day, around the harvest season of the pear, and followed by the New Year holiday, 3–4 months after the harvest. Furthermore, given the unavoidable long-term cold storage and the transportation of exported fruit, maintaining the quality of pears throughout the storage period is critical. Recently, pear skin stains that occurred during the cold storage and distribution processes have been known to result in poor marketability (Park et al., 2008). This discoloration might be due to a pathogenic fungus present on the skin of pears that results in dark brown stains on the pear’s skin and does not penetrate the flesh of the fruit (Kim, 1975; Nasu, 1998; Park et al., 2008). Therefore, it does not impact the quality of fruits per se, as ‘Niitaka’ pears are generally consumed after being peeled, but pears with these specks are generally not favored by consumers and often rejected by the inspection processes of quarantine and customs because of their unpleasant appearance. The types of contamination that often occur on pear skin include soot, flyspeck, and blotches, which are found during the growing and cold storage periods (Kim et al., 1999), and can be categorized into fruit skin blackening (Choi et al., 1995; Kim, 1975), fruit skin contamination (Kim et al., 1999), black stain (Yun et al., 2000), and sooty skin dapple (Park et al., 2008) depending on the symptoms of specks. Of these symptoms, sooty fruit skin has been reported, with black dark specks and brown specks on skins of ‘Niitaka’, European ‘Passe Crassane’ (Nasu, 1998) and Japanese ‘Gold Nijisseiki’ (Yasuda et al., 2005, 2007) pears. The pathogenic fungi known to be responsible for these symptoms (i.e. specks on the pear’s skin) are Colletotrichum spp. (Sadamatsu and Sanematsu, 1983), Stenella sp. (Nasu, 1998), Gloeodes pomigena (Hong et al., 2003; Yun et al., 2000), Alternaria sp., Hyalodendron sp., Phomopsis sp. (Yasuda et al., 2005), Meira geulakonigii, Pseudozyma aphidis (Yasuda et al., 2007), Cladosporium spp., Leptosphaerulina spp., and Tripospermum spp. (Park et al., 2008). Previously, Gloeodes pomigena (Hong et al., 2003) and Cladosporium spp. (Park et al., 2008) were reported as possible causative pathogenic fungi for sooty pear skin, particularly for the ‘Niitaka’ variety. However, this finding has been the subject of controversy, as the fungi were not clearly identified. Thus, we aimed to identify and report the pathogenic fungus responsible for the pear skin stain on ‘Niitaka’ pears in the present study.