Korean Women Peasant Association (KWPA) is an ecofeminist group founded in 1989 to protect the rights of women peasants and Korean agriculture. KWPA played a significant role in mobilizing women peasants and feminist movements during the Gwangju uprising in 1980, which contributed to the democratization of South Korea. With more than 30,000 individual and community members across nine provinces and 60 cities, KWPA is East Asia’s largest ecofeminist and women peasant formation in East Asia. Additionally, KWPA has been instrumental in popularizing agroecology and resisting the dominant global food system that impinges on peasant rights. KWPA’s workstreams include:

• Agroecology school: Popularizing agroecology is one of KWPA’s core tenets. In 2017, KWPA opened the Women Peasants’ Agroecology School in Sangju Seunggok, Green Village in Gyeongbuk. This school provides a comprehensive agroecology program with theoretical and on-field training, aiming to empower women farmers with knowledge and skills in sustainable agriculture practices. KWPA developed the agroecology school’s curriculum by consulting with its members, and drew on intergenerational knowledge held by hal-mo-ni,  a group of grandmothers in rural areas still practising agroecology. Many participants are young women, mostly from urban poor and rural areas.
• Indigenous Seed Preservation: To resist the corporate control of seeds, KWPA organizes local seed festivals for farming communities and runs more than 20 Indigenous seed production farms to preserve the cultural heritage of Korean native seeds. The festivals also serve as seed exchange fairs to revive traditional varieties of crops by collecting and multiplying Indigenous seeds.
• Community Supported Agriculture aka the Sister’s Garden: .The Sister’s Garden box scheme was born out of a desire to build solidarity between peasants and consumers. In 2017, they transformed the organisation into a farming cooperative with 200 women peasant members. The Sister’s Garden is currently providing weekly boxes to 40 neighborhoods across South Korea, reaching more than 8,000 families.  Consumers are also invited to engage in volunteer work with KWPA by helping out at farms or by joining Indigenous food cooking courses held monthly in Seoul.
• Advocacy: KWPA is working to demand a policy that protects the rights of peasant women, especially for accessing land and financial resources for farming. KWPA also advocates for policies that guarantee production costs and strengthen direct payments to farmers, ensuring they can make a living solely from farming without needing additional occupations. In addition, KWPA has also been advocating to resist neoliberal food trade agreements, chemical fertilizers, and GMO seeds.
• Global solidarity: As an LVC International Coordination Committee member and the coordinator of LVC East Asia, KWPA is a driver of many solidarity initiatives on resistance against neoliberal trade, and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants campaigns, among others. KWPA actively participates in peace building efforts, and was part of the first reunification conference between North and South Korean farmers.