level women workers, women mangers, and chairwomen. KWWA also began focusing on education programs such as interactive training, publicity and outreach, policy discussions, and cultural programs promoting broad-based organizing. In other words, KWWA was primarily engaged in providing support for labor union organizing efforts in the early years, but after 1989, it sought ways to recruit and directly organize members. Four years after its founding the organizational mission was re-established as a mass-based organization. In 1991, as part of its broad-based organizing effort, KWWA re-organized its membership structure to consist of formal members, associate members, and regular members, and implemented membership-wide educational and capacity building programs. As a result, KWWA was able to organize a range of members from directors of women’s departments in unions to women worker groups in diverse industries and work sites, as well as married women worker groups. Branch-specific activities were invigorated as well. Also from 1992 onwards, KWWA felt that the focus on manufacturing workers in industrial sectors was too limiting for organizing and expanding the base of women workers’ movement and began organizing in non-manufacturing sectors as well. Particularly in a climate when more and more women workers were becoming marginalized by the labor movement due to the growth of irregular work, it was strongly proposed that new and different methods be mobilized to organize insecurely employed women workers. 3) Organizing unemployed women, the biggest victims of the IMF crisis A Meeting of Unemployed Women’s Aid Society (Incheon, 1999) Unemployment became an extremely significant issue in South Korea during the IMF financial crisis in late 1997. Even though women were among the most affected by unemployment, the dominant image of unemployed workers remained male. Outdated ideologies regarding the gendered division of labor resurfaced to suggest that“women should return home,” and there was widespread sentiment, especially in large corporations, that it was somehow justified to lay off women workers to protect the jobs of male workers. Women’s unemployment was not recognized as a significant social issue, and the government did not give particular attention to women’s situations in their unemployment policies. Recognizing the seriousness of women’s unemployment, KWWA and regional branches