This talk explores how US-produced newsreels played a central role in disseminating gendered notions of work and citizenship to the South Korean audience when South Korea was experiencing rapid industrialization and urbanization through a program of state-driven capitalist development under the authoritarian government of Park Chung Hee (1961-1979). The ideal woman was portrayed as confined to the domestic sphere as a subservient wife and mother, while female wage-work in South Korea’s burgeoning light-industries was cast as temporary and of secondary importance to male-dominated heavy industries. Male workers in heavy and chemical industries were valorized as national heroes and representative of a masculine ideal. Despite the sharp contrast in how male and female labour was valued in the newsreels’ narratives, both served to mystify the labour exploitation process that was happening under Park Chung Hee’s “big push” to rapid industrialization. The talk articulates how the newsreels obscured the crucial role of women workers in South Korea’s rapid industrialization process and obfuscated male workers’ grievances to maintain a docile workforce in line with the state’s industrialization strategy.