Ramseyer Admits Mistake: "I Made an Error... Feeling Embarrassed and Distressed"

On the 26th, MBC News reported that Professor Ramseyer, who claimed that Japanese military comfort women were voluntary prostitutes, admitted that there were errors in his paper. Photo by MBC Broadcast Screen Capture.

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Bong-ju] John Mark Ramseyer, a professor at Harvard University in the United States, who wrote a controversial paper claiming that Japanese military comfort women were voluntary prostitutes, has reportedly admitted that there are errors in his paper.

On the 26th, MBC's "News Desk" reported that Ramseyer said in an email to a fellow professor, "I don't know why I did it, but I made a mistake."

According to the report, recently Professor Suk Ji-young of Harvard Law School criticized Ramseyer's paper in an article contributed to the United States' leading current affairs magazine, The New Yorker, and also disclosed some of the emails exchanged with Ramseyer.

According to Professor Suk's article, Ramseyer confessed that he could not find a contract indicating that Korean comfort women victims had entered into prostitution contracts. This means he himself admitted that there is no evidence to prove his claim that 'comfort women were prostitutes.'

Professor Suk also pointed out errors in Ramseyer's paper.

Previously, Ramseyer claimed in the controversial paper that a 10-year-old Japanese girl voluntarily entered into a prostitution contract.

Ramseyer cited this part from a Japanese book, but another part of the book contains testimony that the girl resisted and was deceived into coming. In other words, he omitted part of the reference material.

Based on this, when other professors criticized the claim that "a 10-year-old girl voluntarily entered into a prostitution contract" as erroneous, Ramseyer reportedly expressed that he felt "embarrassed and distressed."

According to Professor Suk, Ramseyer admitted, "I don't know why I did it, but I actually made a mistake in that part."