Ramseyer's 'Comfort Women Paper' Journal Refuses Retraction

'Expression of Concern' to be Maintained

In 2020, an overseas academic journal that published Harvard professor Mark Ramseyer's paper defending the recruitment of Japanese military comfort women ultimately rejected calls from the academic community to retract the paper.

Elsevier, the international journal publisher managing the 'International Review of Law and Economics (IRLE)' where the paper was registered, announced on the 19th (local time) after introducing the verification process of Ramseyer's paper titled "Contracts of Sex in the Pacific War."

Previously, some in the academic community criticized the paper for being factually inaccurate, and IRLE stated that it requested a re-examination from six historians. According to IRLE, four of the six historians who accepted the re-examination pointed out problems with Ramseyer's paper, excluding two who declined the review.

Mark Ramseyer, Professor at Harvard University / Photo by Yonhap News

However, IRLE decided not to retract the paper. According to Elsevier's internal regulations, a paper can only be retracted if there is unethical conduct such as data manipulation, and Ramseyer's paper does not qualify as a violation of these rules.

Nonetheless, separate from the retraction decision, IRLE decided to maintain the "Expression of Concern" issued two years ago regarding this paper. An Expression of Concern is a measure taken by a publisher to inform readers that there are issues concerning the reliability of a specific paper.

Meanwhile, Ramseyer's paper "Contracts of Sex in the Pacific War" was published in December 2020. The paper sparked controversy as it claimed that the victims of the Japanese military comfort women system were not forcibly recruited but were commercial prostitutes.

The English edition of the Japanese media outlet Sankei Shimbun, "Japan Forward," introduced a summary of the paper in January 2021, stating that it "revealed that comfort women were not sex slaves," and expressed hope that "this paper could restore the image that the Japanese military forcibly enslaving Korean women as sex slaves in the past is a mistaken perception spreading worldwide."