CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) – A Harvard University professor has sparked an international uproar and faces growing scrutiny for claiming that Korean women who were kept as sex slaves in Japan during the war had actually chosen to work as prostitutes.
In a recent academic article, J. Mark Ramseyer rejected a broad body of research that concluded that Japan’s so-called “comfort women” were forced to work in military brothels during World War II. Ramseyer, instead, argued that women voluntarily signed contracts as sex workers.
His newspaper has intensified the political dispute between Japan, whose leaders deny that women have been coerced, and South Korea, which has long pressured Japan to provide excuses and compensation to women who have shared reports of rape and abuse.
Decades of research have explored the abuses inflicted on comfort women in Korea and other nations previously occupied by Japan. In the 1990s, women began to share reports detailing how they were taken to comfort stations and forced to provide sexual services to the Japanese military. .
In this February 25, 2021 photo, high school students hold up banners to protest a recent academic work by Professor J. Mark Ramseyer of Harvard University, behind statues that symbolize wartime sex slaves in Seoul, Korea South. The posters say, “J. Mark Ramseyer, are you a 21st century professor at Harvard? Have you been a university professor in the Japanese Empire for 100 years? We criticize anti-human rights research.” (Lee Jung-hoon / Yonhap via AP)
Hundreds of scholars signed letters condemning Ramseyer’s article, which united North and South Korea to generate outrage. Last Tuesday, North Korea’s state-owned DPRK Today newspaper published an article calling Ramseyer “repulsive money miser” and “pseudo-academic”.
Ramseyer, a professor of Japanese legal studies at Harvard Law School, declined to comment.
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Ramseyer’s article, entitled “Hiring 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 was suspended, however, and the newspaper issued an “expression of concern” saying the article was under investigation.
Most alarming to historians is what they say is the lack of evidence in the newspaper: scholars from Harvard and other institutions have combed Ramseyer’s sources and say there is no historical evidence of the contracts he describes.
ARCHIVE – In this August 14, 2019 archive photo, Lee Yong-soo, who was forced to serve by Japanese troops as a sex slave during World War II, touches the face of a statue of a girl symbolizing the issue of time war “women of comfort” during his inauguration ceremony in Seoul, South Korea. Harvard University law professor J. Mark Ramseyer claimed in a December 2020 article scheduled to be published in the March issue of 2021 of the International Review of Law and Economics, that Korean women had actually chosen to work as prostitutes. Lee described Ramseyer’s claim as “ridiculous” and demanded an apology. (AP Photo / Ahn Young-joon, Archives)
In a statement calling for the article to be withdrawn, Harvard historians Andrew Gordon and Carter Eckert said that Ramseyer “did not consult a single real contract” dealing with consoling women.
“We don’t see how Ramseyer can make credible statements, in extremely emphatic words, about contracts he hasn’t read,” they wrote.
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Alexis Dudden, a historian of modern Japan and Korea at the University of Connecticut, called the article “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 statements from nowhere,” she said. “It is very clear from his writings and sources that he never saw a contract.”
ARCHIVE – In this March 1, 2017, photo archive, former “consoling” Lee Yong-soo, on the left, who was forced to serve by Japanese troops as a sex slave during World War II, shouts slogans during a rally for to mark the March First Day of the Independence Movement, the anniversary of the 1919 uprising against Japanese colonial rule, near the Japanese Embassy in Seoul, South Korea. Harvard University law professor J. Mark Ramseyer claimed in a December 2020 article, scheduled to be published in the March 2021 issue of the International Review of Law and Economics, that Korean women had indeed chosen to work as prostitutes. Lee described Ramseyer’s claim as “ridiculous” and demanded an apology. (AP Photo / Ahn Young-joon, Archives)
More than 1,000 economists signed a separate letter condemning the article, saying it misused economic theory “as a cover to legitimize horrific atrocities”. Another group of Japanese historians published a 30-page article explaining why the article should be portrayed “because of academic misconduct”.
At Harvard, hundreds of students signed a petition demanding an apology from Ramseyer and a university response to complaints against him. Harvard Law School declined to comment.
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A 1996 United Nations report concluded that women of comfort were sex slaves driven by “violence and direct coercion”. A statement from Japan in 1993 acknowledged that women were arrested “against their own will”, although the country’s leaders later denied it.
Tensions rose again in January, when a South Korean court ruled that the Japanese government must give 100 million won ($ 90,000) to each of the 12 women who sued in 2013 because of their wartime suffering. Japan insists that all wartime compensation issues were resolved under a 1965 treaty that normalized relations with South Korea.
In South Korea, activists denounced Ramseyer and asked for his resignation from Harvard. South Korea’s Minister of Family and Gender Equality Chung Young-ai expressed dismay at the article last week.
“There is an attempt to distort (the facts about) the issue of the ‘female comfort’ of the Japanese military and to tarnish the honors and dignity of the victims,” said Chung, according to comments provided by his ministry.
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Lee Yong-soo, a 92-year-old South Korean and survivor, described Ramseyer’s claim as “ridiculous” and demanded that he apologize.
An influential activist, Lee is campaigning for South Korea and Japan to resolve their decades-long stalemate by seeking the judgment of the International Court of Justice.
When asked about Ramseyer last Wednesday, Lee said: “This teacher should be dragged (to CIJ) too.”
The controversy, amplified by its source at an Ivy League university, yielded a fresh look at Ramseyer’s other works.
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In response to new concerns raised by academics, the European Journal of Law and Economics added a note from the editor saying it is investigating a recent article by Ramseyer – who is studying Koreans living in Japan in the early 20th century. Cambridge University Press said the The next chapter of Ramseyer’s book is “being revised by the author after consultation between the author and the book’s editors.”
Ramseyer repeated his statements about comfort women in a presentation to a Japanese news site in January. In it, he claimed that women entered into contracts similar to those used in a separate and licensed prostitution system in Japan. He rejected reports of forced labor as “pure fiction”, saying the Japanese army “did not drag Korean women to work in your brothels “.
“Expressing sympathy for elderly women who have had a difficult life is good,” he wrote. “Paying money to an ally to rebuild a stable relationship is a good thing. But the claims about comfort-enslaved Korean women are historically false.”
Opponents claim that many of the women were so young that they would not have been able to consent to sex, even if there was evidence of contracts.
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“We’re actually talking about 15-year-olds,” said Dudden, of the University of Connecticut. “This article further victimizes the small number of survivors by making claims that not even the author knows can be substantiated.”