Provided is a carrier recovery apparatus in a vestigial sideband modulation (VSB) type digital television (DTV) receiver. The carrier recovery apparatus dynamically controls a sign determination level which is a reference for determining a sign of an I signal in a sign extractor. Therefore, the carrier recover apparatus can eliminate unnecessary sign extraction caused by zero-crossing which is generated when the receiver receives a pilot signal weaken by a channel ghost, and improves the frequency lock performance in the receiver. Specially, the carrier recover apparatus can effectively improve the frequency lock performance when comparatively large pattern jitter is existed in a low pass signal caused by a ghost signal produces a long delay time.