Professor’s ‘Comfort-Women’ Lecture Gets Him Indicted—And Sparks Debate on Academic Freedom
Lew Seok-choon’s comments about World War II-era sex slaves led to defamation charges and put him at the center of controversy over classroom speech
Lew Seok-choon, speaking to reporters at Seoul’s Yonsei University in 2019, taught that South Korean women in Japan’s World War II-era brothels were doing the work ‘half-willingly and half-heartedly.’
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PHOTO: YONHAP NEWS/ZUMA PRESS
By Timothy W. Martin and Dasl Yoon
Aug. 21, 2021
SEOUL—Deep into a three-hour sociology class, a South Korean professor offered a controversial view of women in Japan’s World War II-era military brothels. They weren’t taken forcefully by the Japanese military. The work was “a form of prostitution,” the professor said, according to a 2019 transcript of his remarks.
Those words cost professor Lew Seok-choon his job, got him indicted and have now made him an avatar in the global debate about academic freedom on college campuses.
A recording of the comments, made two years ago in the first class of the fall semester at Seoul’s Yonsei University, became public after a student leaked the audio to local press on the day of the lecture. The school blocked Mr. Lew, now 66 years old, from teaching the course during his final year before retirement. Prosecutors last year charged him with three counts of defamation. The case remains ongoing.
Among the list of grievances between Tokyo and Seoul, none carries as much emotional charge in South Korea as “comfort women” who were forced into sex slavery by Japan. To many Koreans, the matter remains unresolved and serves as a painful reminder of Japan’s 35-year colonial rule. It endures as a central point of tension between the two countries, unfolding in diplomacy, at protests and in forced-labor lawsuits.
The Japanese government has acknowledged its military was involved in the “comfort women” system and issued formal apologies. Tokyo’s disagreement on the matter now with Seoul largely revolves around whether the government bears any legal liability—which it denies, citing prior accords with Seoul. The United Nations, as far back as 1996, has published reports describing the comfort-women system as sexual slavery.
In an interview, Mr. Lew said he had given that same lecture for more than a decade. Students always pushed back and they debated. But the discourse had never before become public.
A former ‘comfort woman,’ in blue, joined a 2017 rally in Seoul to mark the anniversary of the 1919 uprising against Japanese colonial rule in South Korea.
PHOTO: AHN YOUNG-JOON/ASSOCIATED PRESS
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Though he hasn’t conducted research himself, Mr. Lew said his views come from having read books that cast doubts on the Japanese government forcing the women into sex work. Some joined voluntarily, were coerced by fellow Koreans or did so because their families needed money given the country’s widespread poverty, he contends.
The “comfort women,” Mr. Lew told students, were similar to prostitutes today, doing the work “half-willingly and half-heartedly.”
Mr. Lew said his comments expressed his own opinion, backed by research, and don’t constitute a crime, especially as a professor lecturing inside a classroom. He compares himself to Nicolaus Copernicus, the Renaissance-era astronomer who was doubted for proposing—rightfully, it turned out—that planets revolve around the sun and not the Earth.
“His idea was a very minority one at the beginning,” Mr. Lew said. “But it has been changed completely to the opposite side.”
Mr. Lew’s right to express his views won support in a recent letter shared publicly and signed by more than a dozen academics from Yale Law School, Harvard Law School and Georgetown University. The group includes the linguists Noam Chomsky and Steven Pinker, who have both been outspoken about defending academic freedom.
“Professor Lew’s indictment illustrates how a culture of censorship is gradually permeating through academe,” the letter reads.
While some U.S. academics have been disciplined for classroom remarks, it is unthinkable that a professor could face indictment for a lecture, absent a strong incitement for violence or a national-security threat, said Kyu Ho Youm, a First Amendment law professor at the University of Oregon, who as a youth lived under South Korea’s military dictatorship.
“We have to protect people who have thoughts we hate,” Mr. Youm said. “Open democracy is not only for those who agree with us.”
The South Korean prosecutors’ defamation case will be difficult to win, because Mr. Lew spoke broadly about “comfort women” rather than specifying an individual, which weakens the legal grounds for punishment, said Choi Jin-nyoung, a South Korean lawyer and a former spokesman for the Korean Bar Association. Meanwhile, the country’s constitution specifies protections for academics alongside those for artistic expression.
A 2015 deal sealed by the foreign ministers of Japan and South Korea to resolve the dispute over reparations for Korean women forced into sex work faced an immediate backlash.
PHOTO: YONHAP NEWS/ZUMA PRESS
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That generally shields professors in classrooms, even if their lectures are factually inaccurate, Mr. Choi added.
“This is a matter that should be resolved through debate and criticism, not legally,” said Mr. Choi, who has worked on legal cases about “comfort women.”
Decades of research clash with Mr. Lew’s interpretations of history. South Korean victims, aged 11 to 27 at the time, testified that they were drafted into “military comfort stations” through abduction and false job offers, according to the Korean Council for Justice and Remembrance for the Issues of Military Sexual Slavery by Japan, a Seoul-based advocacy group for the survivors. At times 20 to 30 Japanese soldiers waited in line outside of the “comfort stations” and the women weren’t allowed to leave, according to testimonies collected by the group.
In a 1996 U.N. special rapporteur report that addressed “military sexual slavery in wartime,” one Korean victim testified that as a 13-year-old girl she had been snatched by a Japanese garrison soldier as she went to fetch water from the village well. She was later taken to a Japanese army garrison, where there were around 400 other young Korean girls who served more than 5,000 Japanese soldiers a day, according to the U.N. report.
The body of evidence totals hundreds of survivor testimonies and historical documents that point to Japanese coercion, said Jinhee Lee, a history professor at Eastern Illinois University, who has catalyzed efforts to respond to claims that the women were prostitutes—including an academic-journal article published online late last year by a Harvard professor that drew widespread recrimination. Such notions are akin to hate speech, she added.
“The rhetoric of ‘academic freedom’ cannot be used to crush the sanctity of human lives and throw off the priority of protecting people’s basic human rights,” said Ms. Lee, who is also a research associate at Harvard’s Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies.
“It’s not surprising anymore that they are denying history.”— Lee Na-young, head of a victims’ group that has sued Lew Seok-choon for defamation.
Tokyo and Seoul in 2015 had agreed to a deal that “finally and irreversibly” resolved the dispute over reparations for Korean women forced into sex work.
Under the deal, Tokyo agreed to pay at the time around $8 million in support funds for the surviving women, while Japan’s then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe expressed his “most sincere apologies.”
The deal faced immediate backlash from survivors and activist groups, who were upset they weren’t consulted. South Korean President Moon Jae-in, after taking office in 2017, told Mr. Abe the deal was unacceptable to most South Koreans and later dissolved the victims’ compensation fund.
Mr. Lew’s class lecture remarks echo claims made over the years by ultraconservative South Korean voices sympathetic toward Japan, said Lee Na-young, head of a victims’ group that has sued Mr. Lew for defamation.
“It’s not surprising anymore that they are denying history,” Ms. Lee said.
After Mr. Lew’s classes were halted, Yonsei University suspended him a month before his retirement in August 2020. Mr. Lew said he has no regrets about his remarks because he believes what he said is true. He has received death threats, he added. People recognize him in public and critics far outnumber his supporters, he said. Yonsei University declined to comment.
He blames what he describes as a hypersensitive campus environment and believes the student who recorded him was female. Professors who make comments about feminist issues that aren’t politically correct run the risk of falling into a similar situation, Mr. Lew said.
“Although I come from the political right wing, we still need [the] leftist side in our country to be a healthy country,” Mr. Lew said. “We need left and right at the same time.”
Near the end of his class, Mr. Lew told the half a dozen or so students that they should pity prostitutes today rather than focusing on what happened to “comfort women” decades ago, according to the transcript. He then dismissed the class.
“Let’s continue next week,” he said.
Write to Timothy W. Martin at timothy.martin@wsj.com and Dasl Yoon at dasl.yoon@wsj.com
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