20 Years of Korean Women Workers Association Evaluation and Future Tasks By Yong Ju Son(former General Secretary of KWWA) 1. 20 years organizing and building the power of women workers Since its founding in 1987, Korean Women Workers Association(KWWA) has been working tirelessly to organize women workers. At the time, Korean society was experiencing an explosion of democratic unionization nationwide, and KWWA was centrally concerned with organizing labor unions at non-unionized work sites. Over time, however, KWWA became increasingly concerned with building the power of women workers who are excluded from male-dominated, large enterprise unions. In particular, the changing reality of women workers—such as the intensification of irregular employment, further exclusion of women workers from labor laws and social protection, growing levels of poverty for working women, and the persistence of low unionization rates among women workers— required special attention and new strategies. Over the last 20 years, KWWA has not only strived to organize women workers at the work site, but also aimed to meet new challenges facing unemployed women, irregular women workers, informal sector women, and working poor women. 1) Focusing on the effort to build strong democratic unions At the time when KWWA was founded, under the dictatorial regime of Chun Doo-hwan, it was practically impossible to operate a labor movement organization in public. The few activists whose names were known in public had to prepare themselves for search, confiscation and arrest by the government at any time. For that reason, many labor movement organizations operated informally or secretively. In spite of these obstacles, KWWA resolved to build a new women workers’ movement and began operating as a public labor movement organization. Beginning with the historical Great Workers’ Struggle in July and August of 1987, the enthusiasm for building new unions was virtually explosive. KWWA began actively supporting the work of union organizing, distributing flyers