The New York Times
A Harvard professor calls sex slaves from wartime ‘prostitutes’. One pushed back.
SEOUL, South Korea – The students and the survivors were divided by two generations and 7,000 miles, but they met at Zoom to discuss a common goal: to dispel a Harvard professor’s widely disputed allegations of sexual slavery. turning World War II into a learnable moment. A recent article in the academic journal by the professor, in which he described the Korean and other women who were forced to serve the Japanese troops as ‘prostitutes’, caused a stir in South Korea and among scholars in the United States. cause. It also gave the Zoom call last week a chance for the aging survivor of the Japanese Imperial Army’s brothels to tell her story to a group of Harvard students, including her case on why Japan should apologize in full and facing international prosecution. Sign up for The Morning Newsletter of the New York Times ‘The recent remarks by the professor at Harvard are something you should all ignore,’ Lee Yong-soo, a 92-year-old in South Korea and one of only a handful so-called comfort women who are still alive, the students told. But the remarks were a “disguised blessing” because they created a great deal of controversy, added Lee, who was abducted and repeatedly raped by Japanese soldiers during World War II. “So it’s a wake-up call.” The controversy over the academic paper echoes the early 1990s, a time when the world first began to hear the voices of survivors of Japan’s sexual slavery in wartime Asia – traumas affecting the region’s conservative patriarchal cultures. long underestimated. The testimony of survivors drives much of the academic story on the subject. Yet many scholars say that conservative forces are once again trying to marginalize the survivors. “It’s so shocking to be dragged back 30 years later because survivors from a wide variety of countries have found a voice in the meantime,” Alexis Dudden, a historian from Japan and Korea at the University of Connecticut, said in an interview. with the women. . The uproar began after an academic magazine’s website published an article in December in which J. Mark Ramseyer, a professor at Harvard Law School, claimed that the women were ‘prostitutes’ who willingly entered into contracts. An international chorus of historians has called for the article to be withdrawn, saying its arguments ignore extensive historical evidence and sound more like a page from Japan’s far-right playbook. A group of more than 1,900 economists wrote this week that the article used game theory, law and economics as ‘cover to legitimize heinous atrocities’. The Korean International Student Union at Harvard also demanded an apology from Ramseyer and expressed concern that the university’s name could ‘give credibility to the argument’ that the war in Japan is not responsible for the trafficking and addiction of women. A petition with similar language was signed by hundreds of Harvard students. Several scholars have noted that Ramseyer’s argument was erroneous because he did not provide evidence of signed contracts with Korean women – and that the focus on contracts was misleading in the first place because the women, many of whom were teenagers, did not have free agency. do not have. Ramseyer’s paper also ignored a 1996 United Nations report concluding that consolation women, who came from a number of countries, mostly in Asia, were sex slaves, said Yang Kee-ho, a professor in Japanese studies at Sungkonghoe University in Seoul, said. “There are many details in the newspaper that contradict facts and distort the truth,” he added. The article, ‘Contracting for Sex in the Pacific War’, argues that the Japanese military created standards for licensing so-called comfort stations in Asia during World War II as a way to prevent the spread of venereal diseases. Ramseyer, an expert in Japanese law, wrote that ‘prostitutes’ who worked in the brothels signed contracts similar to those used in Tokyo brothels, but with shorter conditions and higher pay to avoid the danger of work. in war zones. Ramseyer turned down an interview request. He had earlier argued that relying on survivors’ testimony was problematic because some of the women had changed their accounts over the years. “Allegations of addicted Korean comfort women are historically untrue,” he wrote last month in Japan’s Forward, an English-language website linked to a right-wing Japanese newspaper. The International Review of Law and Economics, which Ramseyer’s recent newspaper published online, posted an “expression of concern” this month, saying it was examining the newspaper’s historical evidence. However, the editors of the magazine said through a spokesperson that the article would still be published in the March issue and that it was considered final. Another publication, the European Journal of Law and Economics, said this week that it is investigating concerns raised over an article by Ramseyer published last week about the experiences of Korean migrants in Japan. Ramseyer’s supporters include a group of six academics from Japan who said in a letter to the editors of the International Review of Law and Economics that the article that caused the recent outcry was ‘well within the academic and diplomatic mainstream’ was and is supported by work of scholars. in Japan, South Korea and the United States. They do not name any specific scholars. One academic who signed the letter, Kanji Katsuoka, said in an interview that he only read the summary of the article “Contracting for Sex”, but that the term “prostitute” is appropriate because the women were paid for their services . “Harvard University is the top school in the United States,” added Katsuoka, a lecturer at Meisei University and the secretary-general of a right-wing research organization. “If they lose freedom of speech, I have to judge that there is no freedom of speech in the United States.” When survivors like Lee began talking publicly about their sexual slavery to Japanese troops, they were embraced for three decades by an emerging feminist movement in East Asia that advocated the right of women to claim their own history. Although the testimonies in 1993 demanded an official apology from Japan, the matter remains deeply controversial. The governments of Japan and South Korea agreed to resolve it in 2015, when Japan took responsibility, apologized to the women again and promised to set up a $ 8.3 million fund to helps with the care of the elderly. Some of the survivors accepted a portion of the funds, but Lee and a few others rejected the sound, saying it did not provide official compensation or specify Japan’s legal responsibility. More recently, people have insisted on Japan’s political law, including former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, that Korean women were not sex slaves because there is no evidence that they were physically forced into the brothels. Survivors have long disputed the claim. Lee said Japanese soldiers dragged her from her home as a teenager and covered her mouth so she could not call to her mother. Ji Soo Janet Park, a Harvard law student who helped organize the recent Zoom event with Lee, said it was designed to combat “denialists and revisionists” who wanted to erase reports of sexual slavery during wartime . “We are the next generation responsible for ensuring that it remains a part of history,” said Park, 27. In his undergraduate dissertation, he investigated how memorials to former sex slaves form Korean American identities. In an interview this week, Lee, the survivor, said she was upset to see people in Japan repeat Ramseyer’s “absurd” remarks. She said she had not abandoned her campaign to prosecute the case before the International Court of Justice. “As a last resort, I want to clarify the matter with the ICJ,” she said, referring to the court. “If I die and meet the victims who have already passed away, I can tell them that I have solved this problem.” This article originally appeared in The New York Times. © 2021 The New York Times Company