A digital directional relay converts a voltage value and a current value of a power system into digital voltage data and digital current data by periodic sampling and determines a direction of a fault using the digital voltage data and the digital current data. In the digital directional relay, a variation in unbalanced component voltage (114, 142) and a variation in unbalanced component current (115, 143) are computed using both voltage data at a reference point in time and voltage data at a point in time elapsed from the reference point in time by a given sampling interval and using both current data at reference time and current data at time elapsed from the reference time by a given sampling interval, respectively. A relationship in phase between these variations is obtained to determine whether a forward fault or a reverse fault occurs (116, 117). |