An apparatus and method for estimating motion are provided. An exemplary motion estimating apparatus comprises a background representative calculator for calculating a background representative vector representing background motion of a frame to be interpolated on the basis of motion vectors of the frame to be interpolated, a block motion calculator for calculating motion vectors for respective blocks of the frame to be interpolated on the basis of a current frame and a previous frame, for providing the motion vectors to the background representative calculator, and for calculating background motion vectors for the respective blocks through local search on the basis of the background representative vector output from the background representative calculator, a motion error detector for determining whether each block is in a text area on the basis of the motion vectors and the background motion vectors output from the block motion calculator and a motion correcting unit for determining whether each block in the text area is in a boundary area on the basis of motion vectors of peripheral blocks of each block when each block is in the text area, and for correcting a motion vector of each block in the boundary area when each block in the text area is in the boundary area.