THE DEBATE | OPINION
On ‘Comfort Women’ and Academic Freedom: A Rebuttal
Academic freedom does not protect outright falsehoods and distortions.
By Yong-Shik Lee and Chan Un Park
February 23, 2021
In this Friday, Oct. 9, 2020 file photo, a statue commemorating so-called “comfort women” is displayed at a residential area in central Berlin, Germany.Credit: AP Photo/Markus Schreiber
A recent attack on the criticism of J. Mark Ramseyer’s article, “Contracting for Sex in the Pacific War,” reveals troubling insensitivity and disregard of an atrocious human rights violation.
We, scholars based in the United States and South Korea, call for the cessation of attempts both to spread outrageous falsehoods about Japan’s abuse of “comfort women,” an atrocious crime against humanity, and to advocate such conduct directly or indirectly by attacking fair criticism of Ramseyer’s article under the false pretense of academic freedom. Academic freedom does not protect outrageous falsehoods and distortions.
Joseph Yi and Joe Phillips wrote an op-ed on the controversy in The Diplomat, claiming that “[a]ttacking Ramseyer’s academic integrity because of personal connections to Japan is unproductive and sounds xenophobic.”
Yi and Phillips mischaracterize the criticism of Ramseyer’s article, which attempts to justify the military sexual slavery enforced by Japan during World War II as a legitimate contractual arrangement. Such contracts did not exist, and Ramseyer has not been able to present any evidence of such contracts.
For this reason, a number of scholars from around the world, including Hannah Shepherd (University of Cambridge, U.K.), Sayaka Chatani (National University of Singapore, Singapore), David Ambaras (North Carolina State University, U.S.), and Chelsea Szendi Schieder (Aoyama Gakuin University, Japan), question Ramseyer’s academic integrity.
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They demand the retraction of Ramseyer’s paper, not because of his personal connections to Japan, but rather because of his complete disregard of relevant evidence. Two Harvard historians, Professors Carter Eckert and Andrew Gordon, acting on a request by the International Review of Law and Economics to review Ramseyer’s article, also reached the same conclusion. They recommended that the journal suspend the publication of Ramseyer’s article and retract it, pending the outcome of the journal’s own investigation.
As should be evident to readers, the widespread criticism is not an expression of nationalism or the “Korean perspective,” but of a grave concern about attempts to justify atrocious human rights violations. The controversy is not a political debate between Korea and Japan, as Yi and Phillips purport it to be, but a serious human rights question that concerns everyone.
Yi and Phillips also criticize South Korea for allegedly failing to accommodate vigorous public discussions on the question of “comfort women.” Their insensitivity and disregard of the painful memory of the victims and their supporters is appalling. The military sexual slavery enforced by Japan is traumatic history for most Koreans. Koreans would be naturally cautious about such discussions, as they are likely to trigger the memory of traumatic pain and suffering.
Yi and Phillips also cite Korean lawsuits regarding controversial books and speeches about the sexual slavery. While academic freedom should be protected, it must not be abused to justify outrageous falsehoods and distortions. In Germany, where many believe academic freedom is well preserved, public advocacy of the war crimes committed by the Nazi regime would lead to criminal prosecution and punishment, but such response is not an illegitimate intrusion upon academic freedom.
Yi and Phillips also attack the credibility of testimonies offered by Korean survivors. Decades before the Korean testimonies were made public in the 1990s, the Netherlands interviewed Dutch comfort women who served during the war and secured testimonies affirming the atrocities of the sexual slavery. Victims from other countries, such as the Philippines and Indonesia, not just from Korea, also offered testimonies that confirmed kidnapping, deceit, torture, and killing of so-called “comfort women.” Even the Japanese government, through the “Kono Statement” admitted the atrocities inflicted upon “comfort women” in 1994:
The then Japanese military was, directly or indirectly, involved in the establishment and management of the comfort stations and the transfer of comfort women. The recruitment of the comfort women was conducted mainly by private recruiters who acted in response to the request of the military. The Government study has revealed that in many cases they were recruited against their own will, through coaxing, coercion, etc., and that, at times, administrative/military personnel directly took part in the recruitments. They lived in misery at comfort stations under a coercive atmosphere.
The military sexual slavery enforced by Japan, the system of so-called “comfort women,” is a war crime and atrocious human rights violation, as confirmed by major international and domestic institutions such as the United Nations Human Rights Commission, the International Commission of Jurists, Amnesty International, the U.S. Congress, and the U.S. State Department. Even the Yamaguchi District Court in Japan affirmed the illegality of the military’s use of sexual slavery in 1998.
Perhaps most perplexing is Yi and Phillips’ attempt to make connections between the atrocious sexual slavery of the 20th century and the “tribute women” who they argue were sent to China from Korea some 600 years ago. It would be absurd to draw any relational inference between the two events that took place several centuries apart from each other under completely different historical, political, and cultural contexts. They also refer to the women who they contend offered sexual services on American military bases in Korea after World War II, citing wild numbers without any verification. Again, such comparison is unwarranted: the Japanese military’s sexual slavery was a war crime that bears no comparison to pre- or post-war prostitution. (Ramseyer also tried, unconvincingly, to make connections between pre-war prostitution and the military sexual servitude.)
Yi and Phillips also compare and contrast between what they call a repressive environment in South Korea, which, as they describe, suppresses public discussions on comfort women, and a purportedly freer Japanese environment that tolerates diverse positions. They will also find the absence of vibrant discussions advocating the Nazi war crimes in Germany or supporting the slavery of African Americans in the United States. It is not because these societies suppress discussions in general, but rather because the extreme trauma and sensitivity of such issues raises public caution, particularly against irresponsible positions justifying such atrocities without clear evidence. For the same reason, Koreans are cautious about the similar positions on the so-called “comfort women” issues, and given the trauma, Koreans should not be blamed for this caution. Korean society does not generally suppress discussions. On the contrary, it is likes of Yi and Phillips who try to suppress fair criticism of what many consider to be the dissemination of plain falsehoods by critics of undermining academic freedom. We reiterate: Academic freedom does not protect outrageous falsehoods and distortions.
Yong-Shik Lee is director of the Law and Development Institute and visiting professor of law at Georgia State University College of Law.
Chan Un Park is professor of law at Hanyang University School of Law.
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On ‘Comfort Women’ and Academic Freedom
The recent controversy over a Harvard professor’s article showcases how limited the space for debate and discussion on the issue has become.
By Joseph Yi and Joe Phillips
February 18, 2021
On ‘Comfort Women’ and Academic Freedom
Credit: Pixabay
We, scholars based in South Korea, call for debating not censuring Harvard Professor Mark Ramseyer’s recent article, “Contracting for Sex in the Pacific War” (published by the International Review of Law and Economics), which researches claims that Imperial Japan forced Korean women into sex work during Japanese colonization. Attacking Ramseyer’s academic integrity because of personal connections to Japan is unproductive and sounds xenophobic. Demanding that he apologize for, rather than defend, his conclusions, undermines a deliberative process that has advanced science since the Enlightenment. Accusations that his article lacks Korean perspective assumes a homogeneous, victim-centered, “Korean” perspective, which labels opponents as anti-Korean or pro-Japan collaborators.
In South Korea, the restriction of research and debate on “comfort women” has fostered a groupthink in a society and polity that otherwise values vigorous public discussions. The few academics that openly dispute the “comfort women” abduction narrative are too often harassed by activists, investigated by their universities, and prosecuted by the government.
In a 2013 book, Sejong University professor Park Yu-ha reported the diversity in “comfort women” experiences and challenged the veracity of some testimonials. Rather than triggering a scholarly debate, a Seoul civil court partially censored Park’s book and fined her 90 million won ($74,000) for defaming former “comfort women.” National prosecutors also seek a three-year jail term for her words. On April 26, 2017, a Sunchon National University professor (“Song”) told his class in a lecture that some Koreans “probably” volunteered to be comfort women. The university terminated his employment, and a court sentenced him to six months in prison.
The suppression of critical discourse too often means that Koreans, including students, lack awareness of arguments and data challenging the dominant narrative.
Activist groups have selectively omitted information that does not fit their narrative and promoted information that does. Kim Hak-sun, the first “comfort woman” to come out publicly in South Korea, gave her initial testimonial to Yun Chong-ok, the founding co-representative of the Korean Council for Justice and Remembrance for the Issues of Military Sexual Slavery by Japan. While Kim stated that her foster father took her and another girl to China, where he worked as manager of the local “comfort station,” the Korean Council’s 1993 published testimony omitted her foster father’s role, according to C. Sarah Soh’s 2008 book “The Comfort Women: Sexual Violence and Postcolonial Memory in Korea and Japan.”
Soh’s book also recounts that Lee Yong-Soo stated in her original 1992 written testimony that, at age 16, she and her friend together escaped from her Daegu home and ended up at a privately-run “comfort station” in Taiwan. In 2007, after Lee became a leading voice of the redress campaign, she publicly testified that she was forcibly dragged from her home in the middle of the night by Japanese soldiers, covering her mouth so she could not call to her mother.
More well known but much under discussed is the willingness of many surviving “comfort women” and relatives of the deceased to accept compensation from Japan. Thirty-five out of 46 registered survivors, and 68 relatives of deceased “comfort women,” accepted payments from a 1 billion yen foundation (approximately $9.27 million), which Japan funded pursuant to the 2015 accord between then Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo and South Korean President Park Geun-hye. Japan’s government also issued Abe’s official “apologies and remorse to all the women who underwent immeasurable and painful experiences and suffered incurable physical and psychological wounds as comfort women.”
In 1994-95, 61 registered survivors (out of 203) accepted compensation from Japan’s Asian Women’s Fund. More might have accepted but activists publicly shamed those who accepted, and the government financially pressured survivors to reject payments. In 2004, a group of 33 former “comfort women” criticized the Korean Council for “humiliating and shaming” women who had received this compensation.
Perhaps most disconcertingly, students typically have little, if any, awareness of South Korea’s state-sponsored sexual labor before and after Japanese colonization. During the Koryo(918 to 1392 CE) and Joseon (1392-1910 CE) dynasties, Korea sent tens of thousands of “tribute women” (kongnyo) to China. Since 1945, an estimated one-quarter to one-half million “comfort women” have serviced American soldiers, with the knowledge and, during the 1970s, encouragement and supervision, of the South Korean government. Modern-day sex workers in South Korea, who often service military personnel, receive little public or government sympathy and, if migrant workers, are often deported. They suffer some of the most punitive sex work laws among OECD countries, forcing most underground, because the dominant societal narrative holds that only a few, immoral women voluntarily engage in paid sex work.
But South Korea has another model of public dialogue – one demonstrating the epistemological value of free discourse. During the country’s authoritarian era (roughly 1948-1987), the government, educational institutions, and media permitted only a one-sided, negative view of the opposing North Korean regime. Repressive measures ensured that facts were sometimes obscured, opposing voices repressed, and policy alternatives narrowed. But, during the 1990s, an evolving liberal democracy allowed academics, media, and civil society to challenge that narrative. North Korea is now a topic of contentious democratic discourse, with competing voices contesting each other’s claims, informing the larger public, and, sometimes, modifying their positions.
Paradoxically, Japan is also a model, with abundant activists and academics who debate and publicize their nation’s faults. Those who have reflexively responded to Ramseyer’s article with demands for apologies and cancellations would better serve themselves, Korea, and the human rights community by similarly welcoming opportunities to debate and reassess their deepest held beliefs.
Our purpose here is not to endorse Professor Ramseyer’s article. Rather, we stand as academics and residents of South Korea to call, not for censuring retractions and emotionally satisfying apologies, but for empirical research and analysis that expand, test, and, if warranted, contest his publication.
Joseph Yi is an associate professor of political science at Hanyang University, Seoul, South Korea.
Joe Phillips is an associate professor at Yonsei University, Seoul, South Korea.
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