  A simple inspection of the one loop quark self-energy suggests a prescription
of the CKM matrix renormalization in the standard model. It leads to a CKM
matrix counterterm which is gauge parameter independent and satisfies the
unitarity constraint, and renormalized physical amplitudes which are gauge
parameter independent and smooth in quark mass difference. We make a point that
caution should be practiced when interpreting the CKM martix counterterm in
terms of those of parameters in a given representation due to rephasing effects
from renormalization. We show how this can be done using the degrees of freedom
in the on-shell renormalization scheme.
