  We present a new analysis of the ratio \epsilon'/\epsilon which measures the
direct CP violation in K\to\pi\pi decays. We use the 1/N_c expansion within the
framework of the effective chiral lagrangian for pseudoscalar mesons. The 1/N_c
corrections to the hadronic matrix elements of all operators are calculated at
leading order in the chiral expansion. Numerically, doing a simple scanning of
the input parameters we find 1.5 \cdot 10^{-4}\leq \epsilon'/\epsilon \leq
31.6\cdot 10^{-4}. We also investigate, in the chiral limit, the 1/N_c
corrections to the operator Q_6 at next-to-leading order in the chiral
expansion. We find large positive corrections which can further enhance
\epsilon'/\epsilon and bring the standard model prediction close to the
measured value for central values of the parameters. Our result indicates that
a \Delta I=1/2 enhancement may be operative for Q_6 similar to the one of Q_1
and Q_2 which dominate the CP conserving amplitude.
