Harvard Korean Student Association: "'Comfort Women Are Prostitutes' Claim Is Highly Biased"

Response at the university-wide student council level beyond the college
Collecting 600 signatures from undergraduates, graduate students, and alumni
Planned to be submitted to the school

[Asia Economy Reporter Minyoung Cha] "This is a wrong conclusion based on highly biased and unreliable evidence."

The Harvard Korean Students Association (HKS) criticized in a statement released on the 8th regarding the paper by Harvard Law School professor Mark Ramseyer, who claimed that "the victims of the Japanese military comfort women were voluntary prostitutes," saying, "Referring to women who suffered wartime sexual violence as prostitutes disregards their human rights and endorses a colonialist perspective."

They further pointed out, "Professor Ramseyer ignores cases of fraud, human trafficking, and abduction that occurred during the recruitment process of comfort women and only cites examples of a very small number of Korean middlemen to misleadingly suggest that the entire recruitment process was conducted legally."

HKS stated about Ramseyer's paper, "It defends the criminal acts of a war criminal country and justifies the inhumane acts of the Japanese military comfort women, which could instill a misguided sense of research ethics among students," and requested the withdrawal of the problematic paper from the academic journal where it is scheduled to be published.

Jung Woo-won, president of the Harvard Korean Students Association, said, "We plan to prepare a large-scale statement at the student council level," and added, "We intend to collect signatures from about 600 people, including undergraduates, graduate students, current students, and alumni, and submit it to the university."

Earlier, the Korean American Harvard Law School Student Association (KAHLS) and the Harvard Korean International Students Association (KISA) immediately issued condemnation statements and protested right after Ramseyer's paper became known. Carter Eckert, a professor teaching Korean history at Harvard, also criticized the paper, saying it is "empirically, historically, and morally disastrously flawed."

Professor Ramseyer published a paper titled "Contracts for Sex in the Pacific War" in the March issue of the academic journal International Review of Law and Economics. In the paper, he depicted the victims of the Japanese military comfort women as having entered contracts voluntarily, earning money by working, and being able to quit if they wished. The core content was recently revealed, causing a social uproar.

He claimed, "The Japanese government did not force women into prostitution, and it is not true that the Japanese military cooperated with prostitution recruiters," and argued, "Prostitutes who followed the military were paid more than ordinary prostitutes due to the dangers of war." In an article for the online media outlet Japan Forward, Ramseyer also asserted that "the story that comfort women were 'sex slaves' is a complete fabrication."

Ramseyer spent his childhood in Japan and was awarded the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon, a decoration from the Japanese government, in 2018.