CAMBRIDGE, Mass. A Harvard University professor has sparked international outcry and is facing increasing scrutiny over allegations that Korean women detained as sex slaves during the war actually chose to work as prostitutes.
In a recent academic paper, J. Mark Ramseyer rejected a wide range of research that Japan’s so-called ‘comfort women’ had to work in during military brothels during World War II. Ramseyer rather argued that the women willingly entered into contracts as sex workers.
His paper sharpened a political dispute between Japan, whose leaders deny the women were forced, and South Korea, which has long pressured Japan to apologize and compensate women who shared their rape and abuse.
Dozens of research has investigated the abuse of comfort women from Korea and other countries previously occupied by Japan. In the 1990s, women began sharing accounts outlining how they were taken to comfort stations and forced to provide sexual services to the Japanese military.
Hundreds of scholars have signed letters condemning the article by Ramseyer, which united North and South Korea in incensed anger. Last Tuesday, North Korea’s state-run DPRK Today published an article in which Ramseyer is a “repulsive money-maker” and a “pseudo-scholar”.
Ramseyer, a professor of Japanese law studies at Harvard Law School, declined to comment.
Ramseyer’s article, entitled “Contracting for Sex in the Pacific War,” was published online in December and would appear in March’s International Review of Law and Economics. However, the issue was suspended, and the journal expressed a “concern” and said the piece was being investigated.
The most worrying thing for historians, they say, is a lack of evidence in the article: scholars at Harvard and other institutions combed Ramseyer’s sources, saying there is no historical evidence of the contracts he describes.
In a statement calling for the article to be withdrawn, Harvard historians Andrew Gordon and Carter Eckert said Ramseyer “has not yet consulted an actual contract” dealing with comfort women.
“We do not see how Ramseyer in extremely emphatic wording can make credible claims about contracts he has not read,” they wrote.
Alexis Dudden, a historian of modern Japan and Korea at the University of Connecticut, called the article a ‘total fabrication’ that ignores decades of research. Although some claim their academic freedom to defend Ramseyer, Dudden says the article “does not meet the requirements of academic integrity.”
“These are off-air allegations,” she said. “It is very clear from his writing and his sources that he has never seen a contract.”
More than 1,000 economists have signed a separate letter condemning the article, saying it abuses economic theory “as a cover to legitimize heinous atrocities.” A separate group of Japanese historians has published a 30-page article explaining why the article should be withdrawn “on the grounds of academic misconduct.”
At Harvard, hundreds of students signed a petition asking for an apology from Ramseyer and a university response to the charges against him. Harvard Law School declined to comment.
A 1996 United Nations report concluded that consolation women are sex slaves taken by ‘violence and coercion’. A 1993 statement in Japan acknowledged that women had been taken “against their will”, although the country’s leaders later denied it.
Tensions flared up again in January when a South Korean court ruled that the Japanese government should give 100 million won ($ 90,000) to each of the 12 women who sued in 2013 because of their wartime. Japan maintains that all compensation issues were resolved during wartime under a 1965 treaty that normalizes relations with South Korea.
In South Korea, activists denounced Ramseyer and demanded that he resign from Harvard. Chung Young-ai, South Korea’s Minister for Gender Equality and Family Affairs, expressed dismay over the article last week.
“There is an attempt to distort the fact of the Japanese military’s ‘comfort women’ issue and tarnish the honor and dignity of victims,” Chung said, according to comments from her ministry.
Lee Yong-soo, a 92-year-old South Korean and survivor, described Ramseyer’s allegation as “ridiculous” and apologized.
Lee is an influential activist and is campaigning for South Korea and Japan to settle their decades-long stalemate by seeking a ruling from the International Court of Justice.
When asked about Ramseyer last Wednesday, Lee said: “The professor should also be dragged to the ICJ.”
The controversy, heightened by the source at an Ivy League university, has yielded new research into Ramseyer’s other work.
In response to new concerns raised by scholars, The European Journal of Law and Economics added an editorial letter investigating a recent piece by Ramseyer – the one studying Koreans living in early 20th-century Japan. Cambridge University Press said an upcoming Ramseyer book chapter is being “reviewed by the author after consultation between the author and the editors of the book.”
Ramseyer reiterated his allegations about comfort women in January in a submission to a Japanese news website. In it, he claims that the women entered into contracts similar to those used under a separate, licensed system of prostitution in Japan. He dismissed records of forced labor as “pure fiction” and said the Japanese military “did not drag Korean women to its brothels”.
“It is good to show sympathy with elderly women who have had difficult lives,” he wrote. ‘Paying money to an ally to rebuild a stable relationship is good. But the allegations about addicted Korean comfort women are historically untrue. ”
Opponents say many of the women were so young that they could not agree to sex, even if there were contracts.
“We’re really talking about 15-year-olds,” Dudden told the University of Connecticut. “In this article, the small number of survivors is further victimized by allegations that even the author knows cannot be substantiated.”