Korean women workers have toiled in exploitative and dangerous working conditions since the beginning of industrial development in the 1960s. Despite the growth of the Korean economy, women workers still face intense discrimination, insecurity and exploitation in the workplace as well as in the society. However, women workers continue their struggles to achieve their basic rights as workers and as human beings.
In the spirit of previous women workers' struggles and to encourage women workers to join the women workers' movement, leaders of the democratic trade union movement in the 1970s created Women Workers' Associations in Seoul as the starting point in March of 1987 and regional women workers' associations were formed in export concentrated sectors, industrial complexes and low income areas across the nation. In 1989, these Women Workers Associations began to interchange practical businesses and undertook collective organizational policy development, research, education, and publication of the "Working Women."
On 12th of July in 1992, Korean Women Workers' Association United (KWWAU) was established to more effectively bring together the efforts of these regional groups and to strengthen the central policy making power. In June of 1995, Ministry of Labor certified Korean Women Workers' Association United as corporation aggregate.
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