[5] After the Park regime established its position in power, it allowed some conservative organizations to exist, as long as they did not show hostility to the government's policies and aimed to support the state.
[8] Even though Park's regime regulated anti-governmental organizations, women factory workers began to raise their voices in the 1970s in order to improve their working conditions and establish labor rights.
The KWWA created the Korean Women Workers Association United in 1992 to organize its regional branches in Seoul, Incheon, Pusan, Bucheon, Sungnam, Kwangju, and Machang.
The KWWA continuously monitors government policies in order to reflect the demands of marginalized women workers in the political sphere.
[24] The KWWA and its affiliated organization Korean Women's Association United registered their names and were officially acknowledged by the government in 1995.
[31] The KWWA worked with the KWTU and provided vocational training, child-care support, and counseling systems to help women workers.
At the same time, The KWWA provided political education to allow the workers to learn about the necessity of collective union activism and to develop their leadership in labor organizations.
[38] However, this attitude did not necessarily change gender roles and stereotypes in South Korea, which often stabilize the heteropatriarchal family system.
Also, the legalization of gender equality in South Korea was partly a way of accommodating the pressure of the international community and that of Korean women workers.
[39] In addition, the KWWA revealed that there is not always enough communication between the younger and the older generations, as well as the activists who organize the association and the others who are in regional branches.
[40] Jennifer Jihye Chun, the professor in the UCLA Asian American Studies Department and the International Institute, argues that there is a strategy that women's organizations should consider utilizing.
[43] The KWWA also insists on a limited financial reward for its activists, which compounds the difficulties of members in balancing their activism and domestic work.
[40] The KWWA is still working to deal with the structural subordination of women workers so that it can fill the gap between legislation and their everyday lives.