Professor Ramseyer's negative statement [There is no evidence of forced abduction of comfort women] is a complete lie.

Harvard Campus Photo by Rizka (licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0)

[Translated excerpt of Yonhap News article]

On January 5th, Mark Ramseyer, a professor at Harvard Law School in the United States, who defined South Korean comfort women as "prostitutes" and received international backlash, has now proven that "comfort women were forced to be recruited." It is expected that there will be a stir by asserting that there are no contemporary documents that do so.

Professor Ramseyer made this clear on the 5th in his article ``Sexual Contracts in the Pacific War: Responses to Criticism'' posted on the Harvard Law School website.

In this paper, which is a rebuttal of previous criticisms directed at her, Professor Ramseyer argues that ``Korean women were drawn into [comfort women] by the Japanese military who fought against their will, regardless of their will.'' I will respond to the allegation,'' and declared, ``This allegation is false.''

At the same time, he asserted, `` Korean women were not forced to serve as comfort stations due to planned coercion by the Japanese military.''

He specifically argued that the 1983 book ``My War Crimes'' by Japanese author and activist Seiji Yoshida was the de facto basis for the forced recruitment of comfort women.

For 35 years after the end of the war, there was no evidence (proving forced conscription). It was only in the late 1980s that some Korean women began to advocate this."

He added, ``The comfort women debate started with Yoshida's 'fraud'''' and ``Most of the experts who criticized me were from Japan and South Korea, but even though they knew about this book, no one He also didn't mention this book."

Regarding the paper in question, Professor Ramseyer said, ``The core of the paper was about the contract, such as why the comfort women received advance payment and what conditions under the contract determined the women's working hours.'' ``However, none of the criticisms leveled at me were aimed at this kind of economic analysis.''

In a paper published that day, Professor Ramseyer cited a study last year by Lee Yuken, a co-author of ``Anti-Japanese Tribalism'' and a research committee member at the University of Economics Research Institute, which received support from far-right groups in Japan.

Professor Ramseyer also claimed that comfort women victims, who remained silent for a considerable period after the war, changed their words after they began demanding reparations from Japan.

In a situation where there is no document proving forced recruitment, the only evidence, the testimonies of victims, lacks credibility..

In particular, he referred to comfort woman victim Lee Yong-soo as ``the most notorious (of all the people who changed their words)''.

[Excerpt above]

램지어 또 왜곡 "위안부 강제징용설은 사기…입증 문건 없다"(종합) "증언 바꾼 이용수 할머니는 '악명높아'…학문의 자유 위협" 억지도 (서울=연합뉴스) 전명훈 이의진 기자 = 일본군