This dissertation illustrates women’s political and social activism in South Korea’s authoritarian era. In particular, I study the local and transnational activities of the Korean National Council of Women, a women’s organization established in 1959 as a Korean branch of the International Council of Women. By connecting micro-level organizational operation to macro-level historical events, I analyze the transformation of feminism, women’s organizing, and Korean society during a 30- year-long timeframe from the late 1950s until the turn of the 1990s. Moving between local and transnational spheres, this study examines Korean women’s activism as part of the Cold War women’s internationalism. This study asks how the Cold War shaped feminist activities, the practices and the possibilities for organization, and what kind of framework the authoritarian, anticommunist rule in South Korea provided for women’s organizing over time. This study challenges the previous scholarship’s views on the international isolation and hindrance of the women’s movement in authoritarian era South Korea. I argue that the Korean National Council of Women found ways to negotiate to advance women’s issues and build international coalitions and connections, as the organization simultaneously cooperated with and resisted the state. My dissertation contributes to the studies and scholarly discussions on Korean contemporary history, the state-society relationship, nation-building in authoritarian regimes, and women’s transnational activism during the Cold War. By adopting a transnational approach, this study moves beyond the national framework to detail South Korea’s authoritarian era. This study builds an analytical framework around the concepts of mass dictatorship, Cold War feminism, and post-corrective historiography, thus advancing three objectives. First, this study diversifies the historical understanding of nation-building in South Korea’s authoritarian era, especially from a gender perspective. The theory of mass dictatorship provides a framework to understand the shared vision of the future that Koreans engaged with and how they were motivated to operate towards common goals of economic development and national security. Second, this study participates in the ongoing discussion on Cold War feminisms and excavates the relationship between feminism and the Cold War. The major themes of the Korean National Council of Women’s agenda (e.g. legal reform to equalize family life, the inclusion of women in national security, the fight against communism, the scientific domesticity related to family planning, consumer protection, and home economics, and the introduction of the United Nations policies regarding women in South Korea) are examined in the context of the global Cold War. Third, in the framework of postcorrective historiography, this study examines the ways of writing history. Instead of replacing previous histories, I seek to make the almost forgotten narratives visible, thus advancing discussion on historical memory, especially related to Korean feminism and its historicity. The dissertation is based on rich empirical material: correspondence between women’s organizations, organizational bulletins, and other publications; reports on the actions of organizations and women’s status, along with news briefs collected in archives and libraries in South Korea, Belgium, and online. By drawing on previously unused archival sources, this study offers the first account of South Korean women’s involvement in the International Council of Women – one of the leading women’s movement organizations since the late 19th century. Based on the empirical material, I reconstruct a historical narrative, highlighting the activities and agendas of the Korean National Council of Women through the authoritarian era until South Korea’s democratization in the late 1980s. The historical analysis illustrates the long continuum in Korean women’s movements. Women’s organizations and groups establish their arguments on women’s role in society on top of the previous movements, forming a cyclical nature. The authoritarian era did not silence women’s movements; this study shows how the Korean National Council of Women combined the central motives of the ruling regime and the Cold War framework to push forward its arguments on the importance of gender equality. My findings also suggest the Korean women’s movement was not isolated from the international sphere but has been an active participant, bringing women together well before the emergence of transnational solidarity movements to support the “comfort women issue” and women’s advocacy for peace on the Korean peninsula since the 1990s.