My work with civil organizations (NGO, NPO, QUANGO, think tank...) in South Korea is about how people in those organizations work. The leaders of many of these organizations have a commitment to work, which entails personal sacrifice, and for which they have been willing to risk their lives as student activists demonstrating against an authoritarian government in the 1970s-80s. Their work has been activism in the streets or academicism in universities, but not often administration in offices. However, administrative work is getting more attention as these civil organizations attempt to professionalize in order to engage with government, academic, and business organizations in more policy-oriented ways. These engagements are often the work of younger staff in civil organizations, but it is not clear if this constitutes the same kind of activist commitment that the leaders had. My inquiry is therefore into the contemporary conceptions of work in these organizations and to what extent these conceptions are predicated on commitment, sacrifice, risk or perhaps something else. And if there is something else, to what extent gender or generation makes a difference. My ultimate interest is in the relationships between civil, academic, government, and business organizations as they are unworking and reworking what constitutes politics while many anthropologists are attempting to do the same.