The word "charisma" was coined by Max Weber as a sociological concept to designate a certain innate quality of an individual by virtue of which he/she is considered extraordinary or super-natural/-human, and recognized and obeyed as a leader by the followers consequently. In the context, the concept was applied primarily in reference to outstanding religious and political figures. However, in contemporary culture the word is attached to a wide range of "special" individuals including entertainers and celebrities, especially in the age of media. In a similar way, charisma research that sociologists, political scientists and psychologists initiated, has expanded into the field of management- and organization (behavior) studies, focusing on "charismatic leadership". Recently, there are also attempts at the side of Korean researchers to apply newest theories on charismatic leadership in analysing the correlation between certain Korean religious leaders and their (successful) organizations. Even if these researches have their own values, by doing that, it is easily overlooked that religious leader is distinguished from CEO, especially in respect of the source of charisma. Yet, there is a seemingly more serious shortcoming in researches on charismatic leaders, namely, the absence of women. Given that women and men do not have equal access to religious resource and power, such a charisma theory is neither plausible nor convincing which puts both sexes under the same conditions, (re)producing a universal model on charisma. Nevertheless, there are only few researches that center on female religious leaders and/or investigate gender-specific characteristics in terms of religious authority.
Thus, this paper is an attempts to fill up a deficiency in charisma research. Firstly, a history of charisma studies is presented with its focus in each research area. Secondly, a series of gender discriminative rules and regulations enforced by leading Korean religions are mentioned, to show that Korean women don"t have the same chance to be religious specialists as Korean men do and accordingly, the necessity of adopting a gender perspective in exploring religious authority. Lastly, taking the case of Korean female religious leaders, the source as well as the routinization of their charismatic authority is investigated and moreover, different "strategies" are pointed out which these women employ to deal with misogynic and controlling power of mainstream religions.