Koreans at Harvard demand retraction of academic paper that portrays comfort women as prostitutes

The Harvard Korean Society released a statement on Feb. 8 castigating the comfort woman paper

The logo of the Harvard Korean Society. (a screenshot from the group’s website)

The Harvard Korean Society, a group of around 600 current students and alumni of Harvard University, released a statement on Feb. 8 denouncing J. Mark Ramseyer, a Harvard Law School professor who wrote an academic paper characterizing victims of Japanese military sexual slavery as “sex workers.”

This comes in the wake of joint statements by the Korean Association of Harvard Law School and Harvard’s China Law Association also denouncing the paper, as well as criticisms of Ramseyer by other Harvard professors.

“[Ramseyer’s paper] relies upon highly biased and unreliable evidence to reach the wrong conclusion. Referring to the women who suffered wartime sexual violence as prostitutes not only disregards their human rights but also condones a colonial view of history. We call upon Ramseyer to make an official apology and retract his paper,” the Harvard Korean Society said.

“Ramseyer disregards instances of fraud, human trafficking and kidnapping that occurred during the recruitment of the comfort women and focuses instead on an extremely small number of examples of Korean middlemen to misrepresent the entire recruitment process as having taken place legally.”

“Ramseyer argues that the comfort women assumed that occupation of their own free will, citing work contracts that the Japanese military drafted for them. That is tantamount to justifying the behavior of a criminal based on documents composed by the criminal himself.”

The Harvard Korean Society asked the International Review of Law and Economics to rescind its acceptance of Ramseyer’s paper.

“Along with exonerating the criminal activity of a state that committed war crimes, Ramseyer’s paper causes secondary victimization of women forced to work at wartime brothels. And by justifying the Japanese army’s comfort women system, which was a crime against humanity, it inculcates an improper view of research ethics in students,” the group said.

The society plans to deliver copies of its statement to Harvard University, the International Review of Law and Economics, and Ramseyer himself.

By Choi Hyun-june, staff reporter

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