The first women's organizations in South Korea arose from worker's struggles under the dictatorship of Park Chung-hee and were focused on poor working conditions and exploitation of women in the family under a system which required women to work to pay for their brothers' educations and support their families. In 1975, Yi Hyo-jae (), a professor at Ewha Womans University (EWU) began to criticize existing women's organizations in Korea as being too focused on legal change for women rather than liberation of women from societal ideas of what women should be. As western literature, like The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir and then The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan and Sexual Politics by Kate Millett were translated into Korean in 1973, followed by Woman's Estate by Juliet Mitchell, Korean intellectuals had become aware of the ideas of radical feminists. By 1977, a women's studies department was established at EWU. The development of the course utilized students' input and also requested material relating to the courses from 150 universities in the United States with women's studies classes. The women's studies department was criticized for relying too heavily on Western ideas, but there was a "strong interest" from students in the classes. The feminist movement, known as Minjung feminism, which developed in South Korea in the 1980s merged worker concerns with liberationist ideas within the broader fight against dictatorship.
