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A Development of the “Jinbo” Womenʼs Movement in Korea
Since the 1980s
Ki‑young ShinThis paper examines the dynamics of the emergence of feminist activism witha case of the contemporary Korean feminist movement. It particularly focuses on
feminist movementʼs relationship to broader social movements and the Korean state
as it has shaped the identity and strategy of feminist politics. It examines how and
why Korean feminist movement emerged during the democratization movement andhow Korean feminist movement has established itself as an autonomous politicalactor in enlarged civil society in the post‑authoritarian era.

Key Words: womenʼs movement, feminist movement, Korean womenʼs organizations, KWAU,
feminist identity, “Jinbo” (Progressive‑ness)

Introduction
The stuffed office of the Korean Womenʼs Associations United (KWAU hereafter) near theold city center of Seoul in 2004 preserved the ambience of serious underground activities of the
1980s. Filled with stacks of books and documents, the office was bustling with several staffs
brainstorming on how to make more attention‑grabbing pickets for a sit‑in demonstration. The
sit‑in street demonstration was not organized by the KWAU, but the KWAU was going to join thedemonstration that afternoon in order to support the main demonstration organizer, labor union.
The old building in which several other “progressive” womenʼs organizations occupy each ﬂoor
seems to provide a quick glimpse at the way how the KWAU works in Korean society: ʻTogether
Yet Separately.ʼ
A vast literature on women and politics has been dealing with womenʼs activism in various
societies in recent years*. Those studies show that womenʼs activism in many societies appeared
as a part of large‑scale social movements or revolutionary movements: national liberation, humanrights movements, democratization of authoritarian regimes. Participation in this broad range ofstruggles is often followed by the recognition of gender‑speciﬁc grievances and concerns (Basuet al. 1995; Udayagiri 1995; Molyneux 1988, 2001; Waylen 1994). In those struggles for broad* For example, see (Smith 2000; Basu et al. 1995; Jaquette and Wolchik 1998; Molyneux 2001; Alvarez 1990)

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social transformation, however, ʻbiggerʼ social problems such as democratization, revolution,
and anti‑racism subsume, if not deny, womenʼs gender interests (Eisenstein 1984; Evans 1980;
Gilmartin 1995; Vargas 1992; Cho and Kim 1995). Women are assigned “womenʼs work” suchas making coﬀee and typing. Their male comrades frequently criticize gender speciﬁc concerns
too “womanly” , “down‑to‑earth” , and working against large social goals (Cho and Kim 1995).
Contemporary Korean feminist movements emerged in this kind of tension with then the anti‑
regime political struggle of which womenʼs groups were important part. This tension and thestrained relationship between womenʼs movement and other social movement groups regarding
gender norms, movement goals and strategies led to the break‑up of womenʼs groups from larger
scale social movements in search for their own identity as “women/feminist movement” in the
1980s.
In this paper, I revisit the question of the emergence of feminist activism with a case of thecontemporary Korean feminist movement. In particular, this paper focuses on feminist movementʼs relationship to broader social movements and the Korean state as it has shaped the identity
and strategies of Korean feminist politics. It examines how and why Korean feminist movement
emerged during the democratization movement and how Korean feminist movement has established itself as an autonomous political actor in enlarged civil society in the post‑authoritarian era.
In the following sections, I will demonstrate that the relationship of the Korean womenʼsgroups to the state and broad social movements has strongly inﬂuenced the ways in which Korean
feminist movement emerged to forge its movement identity. When new Korean womenʼs groups
formed and participated in the democratization movement during the 1980s, they deﬁned theircollective identity as̆(oppressed class at the bottom of the economic hierarchy, such as

manual workers, the urban poor, and manual agricultural laborers). It was argued that the womenʼs movement should strive to liberate women of the oppressed class who suﬀered most fromboth capitalism and patriarchy. Since democratization in 1987, those ʻprogressiveʼ womenʼs groups
have gone through years of internal debates among member groups as to redeﬁne their movement
identity based on “women in general,” that would incorporate diverse womenʼs demands and interests. In the early 1990s, feminist organizations withdrew their membership from the ʻolder Peopleʼs
Movement (，民衆運動)1ʼ whose primary goal was still class struggle, and insteadjoined the new citizenʼs movement organizations that came to form the dominant voices in Korean
civil society. Democratization opened up new possibilities for the feminist organizations to redeﬁnetheir collective identity as feminist movement, diﬀerent from its old identity as a partial movement
within the conﬁnes of a larger class struggle. Yet it has also brought about new challenges to thefeminist organizations since the 1990s. The feminist movement has become diverse and conﬂicting
among themselves in need of collective struggle to preserve its independent feminist identity vis‑
à‑vis other civil society organizations and the new democratic state.

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Searching for a Feminist Movement Identity
In this section, I examine the origins of the feminist movement in the early 1980s and its
incessant search for an independent womenʼs movement identity under the pressure of larger
male‑centered social movements. I argue that the Korean feminist movement developed throughits particular relationship with the Peopleʼs Movement during the authoritarian regimes. However,overtime, such a relationship created a rift within feminist organizations over which issue should
get movement priority, class struggle or gender equality.
‑‑

In the early 1980s, prior to democratization in 1987, an organized feminist movement in Korea
began to form, but only as part of a larger social struggle for political democratization and the liberation of the working class. Unlike Latin American countries where the transition to democracy
occurred during periods of economic hardship and the structural adjustment policies that followed,
Korea continued its unprecedented rates of high growth throughout the 1980s. Continuous
economic growth for two decades resulted in a reconﬁgured class structure, with an increase in
the middle class population and the emergence of the male‑centered working class (Hsiao andKoo 1997). Such structural change in a mature economy threatened the employment of female
laborers who had toiled in the initial stages of industryʼs capital accumulation. As Korea shifted
its development policy from labor‑intensive industrial development, which had relied heavily on
cheap female labor, to heavy industry‑centered development, companies laid oﬀ a massive numberof women workers when many production sites were closed. Women workers ﬁercely resisted thisthreat to their jobs and began to organize labor unions to protect their work (Kim 1997; Pak 2004).
However, their resistance met severe stateʼs repression, as the regime was increasing its repressionof all oppositional political activities.
To help women workers organize labor unions, radicalized student activists attempted to reachout to factory workers by infiltrating factories disguised as workers (Kim 1997; KWAU 1998).
Young female intellectuals who studied labor law and early ideas of feminism also participated in
the labor movement, particularly by teaching workersʼ rights in a limited number of public education organizations.2 Based on their understanding of labor rights and the Marxist theory of political
economy, women labor activists under the harsh suppression of the authoritarian regimes cameto an understanding that the class nature of the state and the divided class structure of the haves
and the have‑nots deprived workers of their rights. Young women activistsʼ observation of women
workersʼ experiences as an exploited class and their participation in the labor movement during
this period became an important cornerstone of the feminist movement in the early 1980s in self‑
deﬁning the womenʼs movement as that of the oppressed women.
In addition to the androcentric nature of the economic structure, the division of the Korean
peninsula into North and South Korea created a particular political condition that differs from109

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other countries. Exacerbated by the global Cold War until 1989, the specific conditions of adivided nation still technically at war3 justiﬁed a strong military regime as indispensable for the
defense of South Korea against the communist advance from the North. The enmity between the
two Koreas led to militarizing of the whole nation with the conscription of male citizens for three
years and more than 30% of the state budget spent on national defense. The state readily put
down labor movements for the purpose of social stabilization since they appeared to be vulnerable
to communist inﬂuence.
Citizenship in this kind of militarized society is highly gendered. Women were required to fulﬁll
their traditional roles as mothers and wives while men served for their nation both in the military
and at work. The state justiﬁed economic growth and strong authoritarian governance as methods
to fulﬁll the urgent need for national survival; meanwhile, each regime put oﬀ democracy (Moon
2002, 2005).
This violent suppression by the state of Korean society from the colonial period up to the
1980s shaped the relationship between the state and society into a violent antagonism. In
response to the violent repression by the state, civil society also confronted the state with an all‑out militant struggle. Moon, in her study of the Korean womenʼs movement, stresses the impact ofviolence used to suppress civil society on womenʼs participation in civil society. She argues,
Violence as method of anti‑regime struggle augmented the scale of violence on both sides
that kept women at the margin of the political struggle... The violent relationship between
civil society and the state under the political conditions of military authoritarian rule andnational division further accentuated the masculinization of the public sphere and thereby
further discouraged womenʼs access to it during the pre‑1988 period. This process reﬂects
the gender norms in Korean society that associate physical violence with masculinity, condoning and even encouraging menʼs use of force. (Moon 2002: 482)
Ironically, the anti‑regime social movement emulated the methods the authoritarian regime
used to fortify its power. In anti‑regime social movement groups, members commonly used
military terms to express their warring spirit and sincere devotion to the “war” against an unjust
political regime. They adopted the most rigid version of orthodox Marxist theory somewhat
uncritically as a theoretical tool to prescribe the nature of Korean society and the method of
struggle. Vanguard‑ism and self‑sacriﬁce in the struggle romanticized militant male activists, as if
they were soldiers giving their lives to the righteous war against an anti‑democratic power (Moon
2002).
I argue that this historically specific androcentric structure of state and society relations
in Korea led to the development of particular forms of the womenʼs movement and its identity
problems. In this militant social struggle where the activistsʼ “parochial” self‑interests need tobe sacriﬁced for the grand goal of the anti‑regime movement, the movements emphasized unityand cooperation. This general goal dominated the strategy and identity of the womenʼs movement in an atmosphere of full dedication and sacrifice. Activists saw separating out womenʼs

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interests from larger social movements as being against their moral responsibility of dedication todemocracy. The Korean feminist movement emerged out of this acute tension between their position within the Leftist activistsʼ groups called the Peopleʼs Movement and womenʼs pursuit of an
independent movement identity. However, as I demonstrate in next section, the Korean feminist
movement eventually set out on their independent path as a result of struggles against both theandrocentric authoritarian state and social movement groups.
̆The political climate in the pre‑transition period provided the womenʼs movement with only
limited public space. There was virtually no legally acknowledged political space other than theexisting state‑managed womenʼs organizations and some religious activities. Nonetheless, threegroups of feminist womenʼs activism formed: womenʼs human rights movement in churches, thewomenʼs labor movement, and the intellectuals and the college womenʼs movement on campus.
This coincides with the emergence of the early Latin American womenʼs movements centeredaround human rights, popular urban community‑based movements focused on consumer issues,
and academic feminist groups. Unlike the Latin American cases, however, the higher level of
economic development led to a strong labor movement in Korea. This is also diﬀerent than theJapanese case where the early feminist movement was more inﬂuenced by radical feminism in theU.S, which focused on the liberation of female sexuality.
In Korea, Marxism was the most inﬂuential ideological underpinning of the democratization
movement and, thus, women participants in this movement attributed the fundamental problem
of sexual oppression to a polarized class structure deepened by Koreaʼs rapid economic growth.
Women activists viewed issues of womenʼs liberation as secondary to the class struggle which they
considered more fundamental. In this context, they argued that the womenʼs movement should
be of and for oppressed women, particularly, those manual workers at the lowest level of the classstructure. In many authoritarian countries such as in Latin America, women mobilized aroundtheir traditional gender roles, particularly motherhood, as a strategic movement identity, primarily because the authoritarian regimes tolerated womenʼs movements based on motherhood aspolitically less threatening (Rakowsky 2003; Jaquette and Wolchik 1998). Many womenʼs groups
emphasized their potential contributions to the nation as caring and unselﬁsh mothers. Also inhighly gendered liberal democracies such as Japan, many womenʼs public and political activities
are based on their housewife identity seen as more ethical (not corrupted) and caring (LeBlanc
1999; Uno 1993). In contrast to these examples, new Korean feminist organizations in this period
repudiated traditional gender identities as oppressive to women by explicitly anchoring their movementʼs identity in oppressed women workers.
Employing Socialist Feminism and Marxist Feminism as ideological tools for diagnosing
Korean womenʼs subordination to the class structure and patriarchy, the ﬁrst attempt to form an111

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independent womenʼs organization came with the establishment of the Women for Equality andPeace (̆ ̆̆

，女性平友会) in 1983, the new umbrella feminist organization4. The

Women for Equality and Peace consisted of various newly formed feminist womenʼs groups, including the womenʼs divisions of the Peopleʼs Movement groups as well as groups which pursued
an alternative womenʼs movement, independent of the ideology-driven social movements. The
broad spectrum of the goals and ideological perspectives of member groups, however, presaged
later conﬂicts among member organizations.
The founding principles of the Women for Equality and Peace hint at such conﬂicts amonggroups with diﬀerent perspectives. The Women for Equality and Peace declared that the primary
goal of the womenʼs movement is the transformation of the social structure (class structure)that created gender discrimination. The transformation of this gendered class structure can beachieved through three separate sub‑goals: reforming the gender‑discriminatory culture, building asociety where men and women live equal lives based on each otherʼs cooperation, and striving forthe reuniﬁcation of South and North Korea (Yosongpyongwuhoe 1984). The ﬁrst two goals andthe last one do not seem connected, in fact they seem to be contradictory when building short‑term movement strategies. However, the association put the same emphasis on the reuniﬁcationof two Koreas as on reforming the gender discriminatory culture and building a new society toaccommodate various groupsʼ diﬀerent views on the origin of womenʼs subordination. They attributed the origin of gender discrimination to the Korean patriarchal culture, an economic structurethat heavily relies on an unequal, gendered division of labor (womenʼs cheap labor at work andunpaid labor at home), and the divided nation as a speciﬁc political situation that creates and reinforces such culture and economic structure. By placing its ultimate goal in social transformation,
it diﬀerentiated its feminist womenʼs movement from the conventional womenʼs movement which
had been quiescent and cooperative with the current political system. Its eﬀorts to understand thespeciﬁc structural conditions that kept Korean women in subordination led it to see the divided
nation as one of the fundamental social problems that perpetuated Korean womenʼs subordinatesocial position.5 The methods to achieve these goals and the proper priority among the goals still
remained an open question, however.
Participants in the early feminist movement paid keen attention to the class differencesamong women. This attention led to the question of who ought to be the main subjects of thewomenʼs movement. The assumption was that the womenʼs movement could not encompass all
the diﬀerent womenʼs interests and that such an eﬀort was not even desirable. The debate overthe question of the proper subject of the womenʼs movement reached a temporary consensus that̆

(oppressed class) women were the bedrock of the feminist movement. It was thesĕ

women who bore the heaviest burden of the Korean political economic structure, suchas patriarchy, political suppression, and class exploitation, and thus, they should be the catalysts
for social transformation. Designating

̆

women as the main driving force of the womenʼsmovement, feminist womenʼs organizations viewed oppressed women as having an independent112

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political agency to bring about social transformation. Such an attempt was a meaningful departurefrom the dominant forms of the middle‑class womenʼs movements which preserved an elite
womenʼs leadership role in the womenʼs movement.
Maintaining their focus on gender issues, the Women for Equality and Peace politicized
gender‑specific social problems, one of which was domestic violence as a crime in the private
sphere. Within the Association, however, member organizations found it hard to reconcile thediﬀerent positions and demands of the diverse womenʼs groups. Although member organizations
shared the urgency of the democratization struggle, they did not necessarily reach an agreement on immediate strategies and on a desirable relationship with the general (male‑centered)democratization movement. In fact, not every woman could risk her life and responsibilities
to her family by participating full‑time in the then illegal democratization struggle. While thewomenʼs divisions of the peopleʼs movement groups insisted on a hard‑line, these more “moderate”
womenʼs groups wanted an independent womenʼs movement rather than one subordinate todemocratization struggle. This disagreement on its position in a large anti‑authoritarian social
movement resulted in the dissolution of the women for Equality and Peace in the following years.
Member organizations, instead, went back to focus on independent activities in their specialized
areas while maintaining an informal network with other womenʼs groups.
The feminist movementʼs second attempt to form a larger and more inclusive association of
womenʼs groups began when a student disguised as worker, Kwon Insook, exposed to the public
her shocking experience of sexual torture, administered under police custody in 1987. The
victim was a prototype of the radicalized student activists in the 1980s who worked disguised as
manufacturing sector workers to help organize labor unions. The authoritarian regime was making
a frantic search for those disguised student activists to put down rising labor activism and politicalinsurgency. Kwon was just one of the thousands arrested during that time, but she was the only
one determined to expose the extremely repressive nature of the authoritarian regime by testifying
to the extent to which the authoritarian regime was using womenʼs sexuality as an object of
torture.
Astonished by this event, womenʼs groups cooperated quickly to form an ad‑hoc committee totackle this sexual violence against women by the state. In cooperation with religious groups, they
supported Kwonʼs legal battle in the courts and endeavored to educate the public on the stateʼsviolence against women. Through their cooperative experiences during this time, they strongly
felt a need to form a permanent organization to organize their common struggles. They formed
the Korean Womenʼs Association United (韓国女性団体連合) in 1987 as a result of such a need.
Thirty‑three womenʼs groups came together to launch an umbrella feminist organization. Member
groups ranged widely in their special issue areas, from those of women workers, women farmers,
housewives, religious women, to those of women environmentalists and academic feminists. The
KWAU aimed at encompassing the diverse streams of the autonomous womenʼs movements. In
many aspects, the KWAU inherited the legacy of the Women for Equality and Peace; for example,

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the founding principles of the KWAU show parallels with those of the Women for Equality andPeace. The ﬁrst issue of ʻ̆ ̆(democratic women, 民主女性)ʼ, a journal published by the

KWAU, declares,
A desirable womenʼs movement is not only in pursuit of the same rights as menʼs, butrather strive for transforming the social structure that creates the repression of women...The
womenʼs movement should establish itself ﬁrmly as an anti‑foreign inﬂuence struggle for self‑
determination of our people, a democratization struggle and a struggle for gender equality
against political oppression, and a livelihood rights struggle for digniﬁed lives (of the working
class women) as human beings. (KWAU 1987a: 2)
Writers in this ﬁrst issue all voiced criticism of the existing womenʼs movements as exclusively
middle‑class womenʼs movements that had, in their view, ignored working‑class womenʼs needs
and privation. Putting the priority of the womenʼs movement on the anti‑foreign and democratization struggle, they argued that the new womenʼs movement should focus on the elimination of theclass structure that perpetuated the oppressed position of working‑class women (KWAU 1992). It
largely echoed the peopleʼs movement. They further emphasized a coalition among ʻprogressiveʼ(, 進歩) womenʼs groups, and also between the womenʼs movement and the labor movement

as a way to win womenʼs emancipation. The political urgency of the democratization struggle inthe 1980s kept them focused on large social transformation, which it may conﬂict with the issuesof various womenʼs identities and speciﬁc rights issues.
When the KWAU nominated Kwon Insook “Woman of the Year” in 1987 for her courage toreveal her excruciating experience and expose the patriarchal nature of the state, it also hailed her
contribution in spurring a renewed womenʼs movement,
Even though she went through an incident so humanly unimaginable and nightmarish, shebecame a major force in opening numerous womenʼs eyes to the realities of the oppression of
women, through her amazing moral courage and purity. She is one of the greatest pioneers in
the womenʼs movement, who rallied women by making them realize the strength of their own
awakened power. (KWAU 1987b: 8)
In response to that, however, Kwon replied with an emphasis on her class identity as female
more than on her gender identity,
I want to say this when we interpret sexual torture itself. It is when we, women, reduce thisincident to the mere resistance to a form of torture that puts pressure on the notion of chastity
through rape or sexual molestation, or the interpretation as a cause for sympathy for me as anindividual. The more important fact of the matter is that they used sexual molestation as torture against a female worker in order to suppress the labor movement. (Cho 1996: 148‑149)
Kwon viewed the authoritarian regimeʼs oppression of women as a way to suppress labor
movement, yet she strongly resisted the viewpoint that erases class in exchange for gender. Thisdiﬀerence shown in KWAUʼs statement and Kwonʼs reply, regarding the class struggle as a methodof womenʼs emancipation, revealed the old tension that had existed among many women activists

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in the democratization movements.
The priority of class struggle over womenʼs issues led both the Women for Equality andPeace and its successor organization, the KWAU up to the mid-1990s, to take an overtly criticalstance toward the existing middle class womenʼs movement. Both organizations were reluctant
to cooperate with the middle-class womenʼs groups and, moreover, strongly refused any forms ofengagement with the state for negotiations which the middle-class womenʼs organizations had
relied on. Until the mid-1990s, when opposition leaders ﬁnally were elected to power, the Peopleʼs
Movement groups were reluctant to work with the state that they did not perceive as legitimate.
In this view, even though the old government had been forced by the peopleʼs power to revise theConstitution to protect peopleʼs direct vote for the presidency, the new president elected under
the new Constitution was the nominee of the old military regime, thus failing to transfer politicalpower to democratic forces. The KWAU and the newly formed feminist organizations were largely
in line with this stance up to the mid-1990s.
Distinguishing themselves from the traditional womenʼs movements which, the KWAU
argued, had represented the interests of middle‑class women̶largely educated middle‑classprofessionals and housewives̶the new feminist groups claimed that working‑class women shouldbe the catalysts for and the subjects of the womenʼs movement. They prioritized economic justiceand sexual violence over other issues, such as family law reform. When the KWAU reluctantly
decided to join the family law reform movement, they did it largely for the proposed revision of
the articles regulating womenʼs economic status in the areas of inheritance and divorce. They
argued that family law had functioned as justiﬁcation for the exploitation of womenʼs labor in thefamily through discriminatory inheritance and divorce law. The statement for family law reformthat the KWAU publicized in 1989 epitomizes this view,
We must note that the family law article that stipulates household living expenses ashusbandsʼ responsibility ignores the reality where women work as hard as men in order tosupport her family. It is used to justify womenʼs low wages by degrading womenʼs labor andpromoting the idea that women are dependent on husbandsʼ protection and economically
incompetent...So far, a small number of educated women have been the major actors in thefamily law reform movement; however, the catalysts for the womenʼs movements should be
women in mass, particularly, women laborers who are suﬀering from the gender discriminatory wages and women workers in agriculture who are tormented under double oppression (ofclass and patriarchy). (Yi 1992: 719)
In response to the Confucian conservatives who ardently sought to preserve the family headsystem̶one of the central principles of Korean patriarchy̶feminist womenʼs groups suggested
that they should place priority on the revision of articles that would have a direct effect on
womenʼs economic status over revision of the entire family law, including the abolition of thefamily head system (through this system, women are symbolically subordinate to the male familyhead). They gave priority to equal inheritance and distribution of property in the case of divorce.

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For feminist womenʼs groups during this period, the family head system was only symbolic, and assuch did not have material inﬂuence on womenʼs actual economic status.
̆Over the course of the early 1990s, the relationship of the KWAU and the Peopleʼs Movement grew uneasy and strained. Social movement and ʻprogressive‑nessʼ in the 1980s were
equated with the democratization struggle, but with the rise of ʻnewʼ civil society organizations
that differentiated themselves from the anti‑authoritarian Peopleʼs Movement groups, Korean
civil society underwent a great diversiﬁcation both in terms of ideological orientation and social
movement goals. While new civil society organizations emphasized the non‑violent methods ofsocial movements and policy suggestions directed to state institutions, the Peopleʼs Movement
groups continued their direct confrontation with a state which, in their view, still represented thecapitalistsʼ interests. The KWAU went on to join the National Federation of Nationalistic and
Democratic Movements, the renewed umbrella organization formed by reconvened anti‑regime
peopleʼs movement groups in 1989 soon after the return to democracy.6 Facing criticisms fromboth Peopleʼs Movement groups for being passive and from moderate womenʼs groups for not
putting a priority on womenʼs interests, however, the KWAU was pressed to redeﬁne its identity,either as a subordinate part of the Peopleʼs Movement or as an autonomous womenʼs organization.
Democratization and the changing political climate during the 1990s opened new possibilities
and provided diﬀerent challenges to feminist organizations. Even after the return to institutional
democracy in 1987, the former ruling party managed to remain in power for the next two termsof the presidency, until 1997, due to the opposition partiesʼ failure to nominate a united opposition
candidate in the presidential elections. A long-time opposition leader, Kim Young Sam, evenjoined the old ruling bloc through the artiﬁce of merging his party with the ruling party and waselected president in 1992. This relatively long process of transition provided many social movements groups and womenʼs groups with suﬃcient time to mobilize resources by adjusting theirstrategies to the changed political environment.7 Since President Kim Young Sam, successive
presidents have been elected with popular support owing to the direct presidential election system.
Unlike previous rulers, the power base of successive presidents within the ruling party was weak,
which led them to seek social movement organizations as partners for popular support. Suchpartnerships and a developing institutional democracy opened new political opportunities andinstitutional channels to exert their direct inﬂuence on politics. The rehabilitation of institutional
politics, especially political parties, indeed absorbed a great number of former social movement
leaders. At the same time, in a formal democracy with a democratic constitution, militant street
demonstrations and attempts at the overthrow of the government by force were no longer viewed
as viable strategies, nor was the suppression of diﬀerences within movement groups in the interestof promoting unity. This changed political climate challenged the Peopleʼs Movement groups toreconsider their militant protests and ultimate goals.

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The continuous making and unmaking of political parties throughout this period made it lesslikely for social movement groups to ally with a political party, leaving civil society relatively independent from the state. Direct relationships between social movement groups and government
agents have characterized the South Korean state and society relationship since democratization.
The state and civil society relationship, however, was more confrontational and uncompromisingthan cooperative. Social movement groups in coalition exerted great inﬂuence and pressure on thestate in the direction of democratic reform (Kim 2002a).
In the wake of the changing political climate, the KWAU also began serious debates over theirgoals and strategies. A number of participants suggested that womenʼs movement should movebeyond the reductionism, economism, and exclusiveness which characterized the 1980s. While
the majority of members still considered̆(the oppressed class) as the main driving force

for the womenʼs movement, the KWAU faced an important challenge from within (Kim 2002b; Yi
1998). At summer retreats in 1991 and 1992, a cautious awareness came that the womenʼs movement had not been able to represent womenʼs broader interests by focusing so rigidly on̆

women. This sparked a heated debate among the participants. Reformists suggested that the

womenʼs movement should shift its attention to various womenʼs social positions and needed tobroaden its base beyond

̆

women. They also requested that the KWAU should strengthen

its professional capacity in order to propose policy suggestions.
In fact, this move reﬂected the new practical challenges that the womenʼs movement faced.
First, the nature of womenʼs labor has changed as industrial readjustment prompted light industries
to move to other Asian countries in search of cheaper labor. The number of women production
workers working collectively at manufacturing sites was dwindling while more women began towork as white‑collar oﬃce workers or service workers. Women in service industries and oﬃce
jobs worked in improved work environments compared to their elder sisters in the 1970s, yet they
were still being subjected to sexual harassment and gender‑based salary/promotion discrimination. The interests of the female working class were signiﬁcantly diversiﬁed. Also, the growth ofunionization and the legalization of union activities since democratization diminished the role ofumbrella womenʼs organizations in the labor movement as supporters for women workersʼ eﬀort toorganize unions. As the locus of the labor movement shifted to legalized labor unions themselves,the external support of the KWAU for unionization lost much of its signiﬁcance.
These changes suggested that the KWAU should reconsider its role and its strategies for
womenʼs liberation in order to meet the new demands and challenges in the changing Koreansociety and political circumstances. Member organizations of the KWAU had already shifted theirattention to these new demands by professionalizing their activities in speciﬁc issue areas. For
instance, the Womenʼs Hotline expanded its local branches to tackle inveterate domestic violence;
the Korean Womenlink () endeavored to support office workersʼ rights; thĕ ̆

Women Workersʼ Association (̆ ̆) launched diverse support programsfor married women workers, and so on. While carrying out independent activities, member

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organizations also worked collectively for the ʻpoliticization of gender,ʼ with such projects as
campaigns against violence against women and issues surrounding the Comfort women throughan international coalition with Japanese women. When the KWAU members debated whether
it should continue to participate in the renewed Peopleʼs Movement in 1992, only four member
organizations supported participation. It was a great change from 1989, when twenty-one out oftwenty-four voted for the KWAUʼs participation in the Peopleʼs Movement (Kang 2004; KWAU
1992).
Cautious as it was, the KWAU was looking into the possibility of separating itself from thePeopleʼs Movement. Prior to this event, a class‑less term like ʻwomenʼs common tasksʼ had hardly
ever appeared in the oﬃcial writings published by the KWAU; now, it was moving in the directionof embracing the diﬀerences of womenʼs interests in all walks. It came to recognize the diverse
sites of womenʼs lives, such as in the family, the environment, education, sexuality, and culture,
where women have played important roles beyond the production sites. With a change in its
leadership from symbolic senior ﬁgures to young activists with professional hands‑on experiencesin womenʼs issues, the KWAU began to step into areas requiring various policy suggestions which
it used to neglect (Kang 2004). In 1993, when a new building secured an independent physicalspace for the womenʼs organizations, womenʼs groups ʻsecured both their capacity and material
conditions as an autonomous womenʼs movementʼ (Moon 2002).
The KWAUʼs cooperation with the peopleʼs movement that culminated in 1989 was reshaped
into one of ʻindependent coalition,ʼ as it redeﬁned its identity as an independent womenʼs organization. The KWAU has worked with the Peopleʼs Movement organizations depending on the issue
areas, but kept its autonomous identity as a womenʼs organization. The slogan coined at that time,“Together Yet Separately,” represents the KWAUʼs eﬀort to balance its support for general social
movements and its own pursuit of gender equality as an autonomous womenʼs movement. By thistime, womenʼs organizations on both ends of the spectrum̶womenʼs organizations that had opposed the KWAUʼs class struggle and those that had strongly insisted on class struggle̶withdrew
their membership from the KWAU. The KWAU secured a more coherent ideological perspective
among member groups and began to forge an identity as a
pursued ideological progressive-ness (movement organization. It) and feminism, and advocated non-violent methods

and cooperation with various civil society organizations. The KWAU has since expanded their
movement to focus on the areas of sexuality, the environment, education, culture, reuniﬁcation,and international peace, beyond a narrow focus on class struggle.

Deconstruction of Korean ʻProgressive‑nessʼ () Through ʻWomenʼs ExperienceʼIn the context of the rise of new civil society organizations, the KWAU expanded its
organizational structure to regions beyond the capital city of Seoul by setting up local oﬃces toestablish itself as a national feminist organization. Based on its broad organizational network and118ジェンダー研究

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the ʻprogressiveʼ nature of the KWAU, the KWAU grew to be the epitome of the Korean feminist
movement replacing the state‑dependent traditional womenʼs organizations. 8 From around thistime in the early 1990s, the KWAU began to reformulate its relationship with the state and new
civil society organizations. The KWAU registered with the state as an incorporated body in 1995.
Feminist womenʼs organizations under the leadership of the KWAU shifted their attention to pressing the government for gender mainstreaming in public policies and new legislation for genderequality.9 As Moon observes, negotiation with the state replaced the antagonism that existed
previously between dissident womenʼs associations and the state and also the dominance that thestate wielded over other traditional womenʼs organizations (Moon 2002). Since then, the KWAU
has begun to pay attention to local and national elections, so as to be able to inﬂuence legislationand policy‑making processes. The KWAU and its local oﬃces support women candidates at the
local level and continuously lobby political parties for election law reform for better representationof women in the National Assembly. They successfully pushed political parties to introduce quotas
for women candidates. As a result, the percentage of women legislators jumped to over 10% in the2004 national election from 2.4% in the 1990s. At the same time, the KWAU permeated the state
directly to promote rapid policy change and new legislation for women. It has participated in various committees of the government for input on policy‑making and had two activist representativesof the Association join the government as cabinet ministers of the Ministry of Gender Equality.10
In lobbying for these reforms, the KWAU ﬂexibly cooperated with various other womenʼs groups,
including traditional womenʼs organizations, to form a coalition despite their ideological conﬂict.
In fact, the sharp distinction between feminist womenʼs organizations and the traditional womenʼsorganizations has become much less clear, at least in their rhetoric of gender equality.
In this way, the KWAU quickly grew to be one of the major Korean civil society groups. Korean newspaper coverage of womenʼs groups increased dramatically over the last 15 years. Graph 1
shows the number of articles in two national dailies with any mention of the KWAU and the Korea
Womenʼs Organization Confederation (KWOC hereafter), an organization that traditional womenʼsgroups organized.11 As clearly shown in graph 1, the KWAU has enjoyed a dramatic increase inappearances during the last decade while the KWOC, the confederation of conservative womenʼsgroups, remained stable in the extent of coverage throughout the 1990s and ﬁnally started to lose
its prominence in the 2000s. This phenomenon coincides with increasing media attention to ﬁve
progressive womenʼs groups formed in the 1980s.12 The progressive womenʼs movement, indeed,
appears to have “established itself as a deﬁnite social force with which the state has to reckon”(Moon 2002).

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In social movement organizations in democratized Korea, ““democracy,” “nation,” “̆(),” and “(progressive‑ness) replaced().” A renewed opposi-tion between progressive and conservative forces now substituted for old opposition between
democracy and authoritarianism. New civil society groups characterized as “

” advanced toform strong political power, exerting inﬂuence on government policies and appointments to major
government positions. Their power culminated in the establishment of the standing committee ofa broad civil society coalition, the Solidarity Network (society organizations on February 27 , 2001 (Cho 2004).
th

̆

̆

), among

civil

civil society groups work in coali-tion as if they were a powerful bloc against the conservatives and the state. The KWAU and other
womenʼs groups joined it to be a part of the progressive forces. The coalition the KWAU makeswith other civil society groups is based on its broad ideological movement identity as “.”Despite the dramatic rise of progressive womenʼs groups, however, organizing women did
not bring the womenʼs movement in the new civil society much further beyond its marginalized
position in the Peopleʼs Movement.
Newly organized ʻprogressiveʼ () social movement groups in the late 1980s and 1990s ap-

parently expressed their concerns over gender inequality. These new progressive groups, however,largely talked about gender to showcase their ʻprogressive‑ness.ʼ In reality, renowned leaders inprogressive civil society groups and politicians were often accused of gender‑blind attitudes andeven sexual misconduct. Since the late 1990s, women in these groups began to challenge theandrocentric nature of ʻKorean progressive‑nessʼ.13 Korean feminists from diverse backgrounds
have called for the reconstruction of ʻprogressive‑ness.ʼ They argue that gender equality should
be constitutive of progressive‑ness. Yoon, the representative of the Korean Womenlink, argues
that the womenʼs movement is an inherently(progressive) movement, so that the womenʼsmovement should not be only for women, but for all the socially marginalized (Yoon 2004). In
recent debates, member organizations of the KWAU reassert that the ultimate goal of the autonomous womenʼs movement is the fundamental change of society towards gender equality and forthat reason womenʼs groups should not fall into interest group politics.

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Confronting the continuing androcentric nature of civil society, the KWAU aims to deconstructthe ʻprogressive‑nessʼ of civil society as still being antrocentric and gender‑blind. Feminist
womenʼs groups and the KWAU participated in founding the Solidarity Network () in 2001. The Solidarity Network is an institutional framework for fine‑tuning in the different positions among various civil society groups and producing a concerted
voice in civil society. Through such an institutional framework of new civil society, womenʼsgroups have persuaded other ʻprogressiveʼ groups to support gender‑equal policy change since thegender perspective should be an essential element of.14

Concluding Remarks

A view of womenʼs activism as one separate cycle of social movement ignores how civilsociety and social movements interact with womenʼs activism and how civil society and social
movements function as a gendered terrain of politics. Womenʼs interests or the social movementʼs
collective identity are not determined simply by the objective nature of being women or sociallydissident and neither is the emergence of a movement a by‑product of the opened political opportunity structure or a simple reaction to it. Activists in social movements develop the movement
identity through acute struggles and self‑reflection in unique political structure and historicalchallenges and this internal dynamic often leads to the diﬀerent strategies and goals that social
movements pursue.
In this paper, I examined the tension between womenʼs activism and large social movements
and highlight that the politics around the tension shaped the trajectory of womenʼs self‑deﬁnitionof the movementʼs identity in the particular social context of democratization and its aftermath
in Korea. I traced the Korean feminist struggle to forge its identity, from thĕ

womenʼs

movement, to the umbrella womenʼs movement based on ʻwomen in general,ʼ and, finally, to adriving force for the reconstruction of Korean ʻprogressive‑ness.ʼ The KWAU moved beyond theirsubordinate position in the large social movement, forging a strong feminist identity and creatinga network among member organizations throughout its struggle for an independent feminist
organization. It also re‑established itself as one of the prime progressive civil society organizations
and increased its inﬂuence on the large civil society organizations that had a bargaining powerover the state. This change in feminist movement identity and strategies led the KWAU to takeup issues outside the narrow area of economic justice only, and to participate in the various policy
areas including the renewed family law reform movement in the late 1990s. The shift of leadership from older middle‑class womenʼs organizations to the KWAU brought about a great change
in the dynamics of the gender politics in Korea since the 1990s due to the KWAUʼs capability ofmobilizing broad‑scale civil society support and its bargaining power over the state.
Due to the rapid change of Korean society since its return to democracy, the “progressive”
womenʼs movement epitomized by the KWAU is now seen as an old style feminist movement thathas placed an excessive focus on institutional reform through “working with the state.” Recent

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A Development of the “Jinbo” Womenʼs Movement in Korea

Korean feminist movements are tremendously diversified in size, scope, method, and ideology,
from active feminist cyber‑communities to the experiment of alternative feminist child‑rearing.
Creative forms of new networks and diverse feminist subjectivities have come to existence since
the mid 1990s. This new generation of womenʼs movement diﬀerentiates themselves from both“progressive” and conservative womenʼs organizations, blurring the sharp distinction between
ideological “progressives” and conservatives which characterized important nature of womenʼs activisms in Korea. Young feminists who deny identity‑based movements boldly declare that “women
are the future of citizensʼ movement.” It is still unclear how it is going to unfold. However, suchcontinuous challenges to existing feminism and womenʼs movement call for on‑going search for
new feminist politics.
(Ki‑young Shin, Postdoctoral Foreign Fellow, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science)
Approved on December 12, 2007

Notes
１

The Peopleʼs Movement here indicates a resistant social movement that formed in pursuit of classliberation against the authoritarian state during the 1970s and 1980s. It developed into the formation of the
Democratic Labor Party ( 民主労働党 ) in 2000. For more details of this movement, see (Kim 2000).

２The Christian Academy in the 1970s provided an important space for intellectual exchange among thosescholars who participated in the anti‑authoritarian struggle. Young scholars who were members of theChristian Academy volunteered to open seminars and classes to the public as an alternative educational
institute. Many labor activists in the 1970s and early 80s were participants in the programs oﬀered by the
Christian Academy

３

The Korean War stopped in 1953 with the treaty stipulating a temporarily suspension of war. The treaty
is not a peace treaty for the end of war.

４

It is noteworthy that women activists at that time when the Women for Equality and Peace wasestablished did not call themselves “feminists” nor their organization a “feminist organization.” Although
nowadays the Women for Equality and Peace is viewed as socialist feminist movement, feminism was still
associated with the Western womenʼs movement which Korean women suspected did not apply directly to
Korean womenʼs situations.

５

Kim argues that these two ideological streams eventually ended up in the dominance of orthodox
Marxism in parallel with the predominance of orthodox Marxism in general social movement groups. (Kim
2002b)

６

Political democracy was achieved in 1987 when the authoritarian ruler, Chun, bowed to the populardemand for democratization. A new Constitution was promulgated and Korean citizens were granted aright to elect their president. To the disappointment of social movement groups, however, the ruling party
succeeded in re‑electing its candidate in the following presidential election due to the failure of opposition
parties to cooperate to put forward a single candidate.

７

Brazil underwent a similar, relatively long and elite‑controlled transition process.

８

It is fair to use plural form for Korean feminist movements. Although my paper has focused on one
kind of organized feminist movement, the KWAU, there are certainly a great variety of alternative feminist
movements these days in Korea that I do not discuss in this paper.

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Gender‑mainstreaming is a policy suggestion of the 1995 Beijing Womenʼs Conference that gender
perspective should be incorporated in all kinds of and at all levels of public policy from agenda‑setting to
the analysis of policy outcomes.

10

The ﬁrst and second cabinet ministers of the Ministry of Gender Equality (founded in 2001, renamed

as Ministry of Gender Equality and Family in 2004) were Korea Womenʼs Associations United representatives.
11

Each paper represents the opposite end of the ideological spectrum (the conservative).

12

The ﬁve organizations I collected this data on are the KWAU, the Korean Womenlink, the Women in

Church Association, the Korea Sexual Violence Relief Center, and the Korea Women Workersʼ Confederation. Also the data collected here are from special sections in Seoul‑based national dailies including
politics, economy, society, and opinion.
13

One of the sensational events regarding the disclosure of the patriarchal nature of progressive groups

was14

confession of male activistsʼ sexual misconducts that they suﬀered.

The relationship with the state is also on debate regarding the autonomy question. Tentatively it isagreed that the representatives of womenʼs organizations should not take government positions during theirtenure in the organizations (Kim 2002b)

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