The New York Times
A Harvard Professor Called Wartime Sex Slaves ‘Prostitutes.’ One Pushed Back.
SEOUL, South Korea — The students and the survivor were divided by two generations and 7,000 miles, but they met on Zoom to discuss a common goal: turning a Harvard professor’s widely disputed claims about sexual slavery during World War II into a teachable moment. A recent academic journal article by the professor — in which he described as “prostitutes” the Korean and other women forced to serve Japan’s troops — prompted an outcry in South Korea and among scholars in the United States. It also offered a chance, on the Zoom call last week, for the aging survivor of the Japanese Imperial Army’s brothels to tell her story to a group of Harvard students, including her case for why Japan should issue a full apology and face international prosecution. Sign up for The Morning newsletter from the New York Times “The recent remarks by the professor at Harvard are something that you should all ignore,” Lee Yong-soo, a 92-year-old in South Korea and one of just a handful of so-called comfort women still living, told the students. But the remarks were a “blessing in disguise” because they created a huge controversy, added Lee, who was kidnapped by Japanese soldiers during World War II and raped repeatedly. “So this is kind of a wake-up call.” The dispute over the academic paper has echoes of the early 1990s, a time when the world was first beginning to hear the voices of survivors of Japan’s wartime sexual slavery in Asia — traumas that the region’s conservative patriarchal cultures had long downplayed. Now, survivors’ testimony drives much of the academic narrative on the topic. Yet many scholars say that conservative forces are once again trying to marginalize the survivors. “This is so startling, 30 years later, to be dragged back, because in the meantime survivors from a wide range of countries found a voice,” Alexis Dudden, a historian of Japan and Korea at the University of Connecticut who has interviewed the women. The uproar began after an academic journal’s website published an article in December in which J. Mark Ramseyer, a Harvard Law School professor, argued that the women were “prostitutes” who had willingly entered into indenture contracts. An international chorus of historians called for the article to be retracted, saying that his arguments ignored extensive historical evidence and sounded 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 horrific atrocities.” The Korean International Student Association at Harvard has also demanded an apology from Ramseyer, expressing concern that the university’s name “could lend credibility to the argument” that Japan’s wartime government was not responsible for the trafficking and enslavement of women. A petition with similar language has been signed by hundreds of Harvard students. Several scholars noted that Ramseyer’s argument was flawed because he did not produce any signed contracts with Korean women as evidence — and that focusing on contracts in the first place was misleading because the women, many of whom were teenagers, did not have free agency. Ramseyer’s paper also ignored a 1996 United Nations report that concluded that comfort women, who came from a number of countries, mostly in Asia, were sex slaves, said Yang Kee-ho, a professor of Japanese studies at Sungkonghoe University in Seoul. “There are many details in the paper which contradict facts and distort truth,” he added. The paper, “Contracting for Sex in the Pacific War,” argues that the Japanese army created standards for licensing so-called comfort stations around Asia during World War II as a way of preventing the spread of venereal disease. Ramseyer, an expert on Japanese law, wrote that…
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