A Harvard University professor has ignited an international
uproar and faces mounting scrutiny for alleging that Korean women who were kept
as sex slaves in wartime Japan had actually chosen to work as prostitutes.
In a recent academic paper, J. Mark Ramseyer rejected a wide
body of research finding that Japan’s so-called “comfort women” were forced to
work at military brothels during World War II. Ramseyer instead argued that the
women willingly entered into contracts as sex workers.
His paper has intensified a political dispute between Japan,
whose leaders deny that the women were coerced, and South Korea, which has long
pressed Japan to provide apologies and compensation to women who have shared
accounts of rape and abuse.
Decades of research has explored the abuses inflicted on
comfort women from Korea and other nations previously occupied by Japan. In the
1990s, women began sharing accounts detailing how they were taken to comfort
stations and forced to provide sexual services for the Japanese military.
Hundreds of scholars have signed letters condemning
Ramseyer’s article, which united North and South Korea in sparking outrage.
Last Tuesday, North Korea’s state-run DPRK Today published an article calling
Ramseyer a “repulsive money grubber” and a “pseudo scholar.”
Ramseyer, a professor of Japanese legal studies at Harvard
Law School, declined to comment.
Ramseyer’s article, titled “Contracting for sex in the
Pacific War,” was published online in December and was scheduled to appear in
the March issue of the International Review of Law and Economics. The issue has
been suspended, however, and the journal issued an “expression of concern”
saying the piece is under investigation.
Most alarming to historians is what they say is a lack of
evidence in the paper: Scholars at Harvard and other institutions have combed
though Ramseyer’s sources and say there is no historical evidence of the
contracts he describes.
In a statement calling for the article to be retracted,
Harvard historians Andrew Gordon and Carter Eckert said Ramseyer “has not
consulted a single actual contract” dealing with comfort women.
“We do not see how Ramseyer can make credible claims, in
extremely emphatic wording, 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
disregards decades of research. Although some have invoked academic freedom to
defend Ramseyer, Dudden counters that the article “does not meet the requirements
of academic integrity.”
“These are assertions out of thin air,” she said. “It’s 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 misuses economic theory “as a cover to
legitimize horrific atrocities.” A separate group of historians of Japan issued
a 30-page article explaining why the article should be retracted “on grounds of
academic misconduct.”
At Harvard, hundreds of students signed a petition demanding
an apology from Ramseyer and a university response to the complaints against
him. Harvard Law School declined to comment.
A United Nations report from 1996 concluded that the comfort
women were sex slaves taken through “violence and outright coercion.” A
statement from Japan in 1993 acknowledged that women were taken “against their
own will,” although the nation’s leaders later denied it.
Tensions flared again in January when a South Korean court
ruled that the Japanese government must give 100 million won ($90,000) to each
of 12 women who sued in 2013 over their wartime sufferings. Japan insists all
wartime compensation issues were settled under a 1965 treaty normalizing
relations with South Korea.
In South Korea, activists have denounced Ramseyer and called
for his resignation from Harvard. Chung Young-ai, South Korea’s minister of
gender equality and family, expressed dismay over the article last week.
“There is an attempt to distort (the facts about) the
Japanese military’s ‘comfort women’ issue and tarnish the honors and dignity of
victims,” Chung said, according to comments provided by her ministry.
Lee Yong-soo touches the face of a statue of a girl
symbolizing the issue of wartime "comfort women" during its unveiling
ceremony in Seoul, South Korea, Aug. 14, 2019. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon, File)
Lee Yong-soo, a 92-year-old South Korean and survivor,
described Ramseyer’s assertion as “ludicrous” and demanded he apologize.
An influential activist, Lee is campaigning for South Korea
and Japan to settle their decadeslong impasse by seeking judgment from the
International Court of Justice.
When asked about Ramseyer last Wednesday, Lee said: “That
professor should be dragged to (the ICJ) too.”
The controversy, amplified by its source at an Ivy League
university, has yielded new scrutiny of Ramseyer’s other work.
In response to new concerns raised by scholars, The European
Journal of Law and Economics added an editor’s note saying it’s investigating a
recent piece by Ramseyer — this one studying Koreans living in early 20th
century Japan. Cambridge University Press said a forthcoming book chapter by
Ramseyer is “being revised by the author after consultation between the author
and the editors of the book.”
Ramseyer repeated his claims about comfort women in a
submission to a Japanese news site in January. In it, he alleged the women
entered into contracts similar to those used under a separate, licensed system
of prostitution in Japan. He rejected accounts of forced labor as “pure
fiction,” saying the Japanese army “did not dragoon Korean women to work in its
brothels.”
“Expressing sympathy to elderly women who have had a rough
life is fine,” he wrote. “Paying money to an ally in order to rebuild a stable
relationship is fine. But the claims about enslaved Korean comfort women are
historically untrue.”
Opponents counter that many of the women were so young they
would have been unable to consent to sex even if there was evidence of contracts.
“We’re really talking about 15-year-olds,” said Dudden, at
the University of Connecticut. “This article further victimizes the very few
number of survivors by asserting claims that even the author knows cannot be
substantiated.
