February 18, 2021
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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.
February 18, 2021 12:00
A professor at Harvard University Law School has stirred up a hornet s nest by describing women forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese Imperial Army as sex workers.
The International Review of Law and Economics recently posted online an abstract of a paper by Mark Ramseyer titled Contracting for Sex in the Pacific War. The gist is much the same as the Japanese government s own claims, namely that the Imperial Army did not force women into sexual slavery in World War II but they volunteered to become prostitutes.
Mark Ramseyer
Ramseyer s paper considers the problem from a purely economic perspective and claims that Korean women who were drafted into military brothels were given a large advance with one- or two-year maximum terms with an ability for the women to leave early if they generated sufficient revenue.
<p>"There has been so much scholarship produced in the 30 years since the first survivor came forward and it’s almost as if Professor Ramseyer's decision is to just ignore all of the debate as if he’s the first person to come into this," said Alexis Dudden, an expert on modern Japanese and Korean history.</p>
Distortion of wartime sex slavery
Posted : 2021-02-04 16:47
US scholar backed by Japanese firm twists historical facts
A controversy has arisen over a Harvard University professor s paper on Japan s wartime sex slavery. In an academic journal, he claimed that comfort women were prostitutes, something a right-wing Japanese newspaper then gave prominent coverage to. It is truly appalling and unacceptable that the professor insulted the former sex slaves, who were mobilized by the Japanese army before and during World War II, suffered unspeakable human rights abuses, and lived in pain for their whole lives. He has thus also derided the efforts of women globally to oppose wartime sexual violence.