As a critical, alternative examination of traditional gender norms and expectations, this article examines how the bereaved mothers of the Gwangju May Uprising have negotiated and utilized traditional values of femininity for social transformation. While conforming to and defying traditional patriarchal canons of domesticity, the bereaved mothers have participated in post-Uprising transformative social movements. As a practical, theoretical update to Ruddick’s (1995; 2002) notion of maternal thinking, this article contributes to the critical understanding of women’s political agency under conservative social milieus, and the dialectics between transformative human agency and any given socio-cultural tradition’s continuing influence on people’s life and everyday behaviors in South Korea.