A character recognition apparatus may include an imaging element configured to read a character string placed on an information recording medium; an image memory configured to store image data of the character string; and a character segmenting unit configured to segment a character constituting the character string. The character segmenting unit may include a minimum intensity curve creating unit configured to detect a minimum intensity value among light intensity values, and create a minimum intensity curve of the image data according to the minimum intensity value of each pixel row; a character segmenting position detecting unit configured to calculate a space between the characters neighboring in the created minimum intensity curve, in order to detect a character segmenting position between the characters; and a character segmenting process unit configured to segment each character according to the detected character segmenting position between the characters.