Professor Harvard's mysterious research results reignite deep-rooted distrust between Korea and Japan
By Jeannie Suk Gersen, THE NEW YORKER
March 13, 2021
J. Korean students protesting Professor Mark Ramsey's thesis. Professor Ramsey argued that Korean women taken to Japan during World War II were voluntarily chosen to become prostitutes. Photo: Chris Jung / NurPhoto / Shutterstock
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In January, I was preparing to write an article on a recent Korean court ruling that acknowledged Japan's liability for reparation in relation to atrocities against comfort women during World War II. “Comfort women” refers to women and girls who provided sexual services to the Japanese Imperial Army during the war at “comfort stations” on the front. Asian women as well as women from around the world were forced or deceived to be sent to comfort stations, but most of them were from Korea, which was then a Japanese colony. It is estimated that the number of victims ranges from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands. On January 23, Japan announced a discourse to the Korean court ruling that the Japanese government, the defendant, paid 100 million won per person to 12 Korean comfort women (7 died since the lawsuit began in 2013). I can't.” Japan decided that the issue had already been resolved in the past, saying that Korean jurisdiction did not apply. I was considering whether judicial decisions on crimes against humanity committed during World War II could resolve or exacerbate historical trauma. This is because, as long as the waves of conflict and denial about the truth of what actually happened, the trauma could not be dismissed as just the past.
On January 31st, students and alumni of the Harvard Law School I attended contacted me. It was about Professor J. Mark Ramsayer, a longtime colleague and expert in corporate law in Japanese law. Prof. Ram Jieer, I also have knowledge, but he was a humble scholar in his late 60s who also gave advice to our couple on what is good for Japanese esophagus on a bicycle with his husband. He was born and raised in Japan, a menopausal missionary to the United States, both of which his grandparents and parents were active in Asia. I also knew that Ramsayer's major major was a transformative idea and argument that overturned conventional wisdom about the post-war Japanese economy.
Current students and alumni informed the news that Professor Ramsey was on the front page of the Korean media. In his two recent articles he submitted, he said that he was attributable to his assertion that contradicted the historical myth related to comfort women. 'Contracting for Sex in the Pacific War', a paper published in the online edition of IRLE, a peer-reviewed journal last December, and an online English version of the Sankei Shimbun of Japan, known for its conservative nationalist tendencies. In a comment published on Jan. 12 in the Japan Forward, Professor Ramsey clarified his point of view. Upon reading all of the two articles, his argument was clear without misunderstanding. Korean women who were comfort women were not forced into sex slavery because of coercion or deception and imprisoned under threats of violence. Professor Ramsey said that such an allegation of coercion was "totally fictitious." Instead, he claimed that Korean comfort women “choose prostitution” and signed “multi-year contracts” with vendors to work in “brothels” on the front lines in China and Southeast Asia. Professor Ramsey explained that the economic structure of these contracts reflects the fact that it was sex work based on voluntary choices using game theory. According to him, "It was the prostitute who followed wherever there was an army, and in Asia the target was the Japanese army."
Prof. Ramzier's writings spread to Korea and around the world after being reported friendly in Japanese media. It was a controversial argument that could potentially affect the US's cautious role as an ally of both countries, as well as the demanding diplomatic relations between Korea and Japan beyond the academic level. Two US lawmakers tweeted that Ramsey's claim was "disgusting," and the US State Department reiterated that "the trafficking of women by the Japanese military for sexual purposes during World War II is a terrible violation of human rights." did. I also knew that Professor Ramsey's work brought me to contact, especially because of the fact that I was the first Asian woman and the first and only Korean woman to be a permanent professor at Harvard Law School. I was born in Seoul, and my parents left their hometown in North Korea during the Korean War and fled. There were alumni who said that my silence was nothing more than a "conspiracy act" because of my position, that I am a Korean and a woman, and that I am writing about judicial affairs.
After digesting Professor Ramsey's logic to some extent, I plan to contact him and openly disagree sooner or later, but urge institutional discipline for his exercise of academic freedom to conduct academic research and express opinions. Even if there is a movement to do, they have said that they will not participate or do not agree. As I post a brief criticism on Professor Ramsey's argument on social media, the contract analysis assumes free individual voluntary negotiation, and in the case of compulsory sexual intercourse without options such as rejection or neglect, contract-based Explained that it cannot be concluded that it is. If she had believed in the statements of comfort women that she had been conscripted and imprisoned for force, threats, deception, and coercion, Professor Ram Zyer certainly wouldn't have made such a claim. In my view, Professor Ramsey decided not to believe in the first place because he felt that the claims of the comfort women were inconsistent, or, in his words, that such claims were "self-centered" and "unconfirmed". It seemed to be reflected in the views as well. On the other hand, Professor Ramsey seemed to trust the Japanese government's position to deny the claims of comfort women. Despite the contradictions between the positions announced by the Japanese government. As I tried to read the writings of my fellow professors with as much generosity as possible, I thought that his point of view might be the product of skepticism about the myth that has been the subject of his life as a scholar. In this issue, I took the approach of examining criticism and disagreement with facts, logic, and interpretation on the subject that evokes intense emotions in relation to nationalism and human rights. The accuracy of Professor Ramsey's argument was judged to be evaluated by scholars through more in-depth analysis. I never imagined that the process would be so simple and confusing.
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Although it is a matter that is apt to be reduced to a very simple problem by reducing the conflict between Korea and Japan, victims and perpetrators, and women and men, historians have found hundreds of comfort stations spread across Asia that suffered from war, people of various nationalities, and numerous experiences. Careful research has been continued on this intertwined comfort station system and its meaning. There has been debate among scholars about the exact role of the Japanese military with private recruiters in procuring women. How to view the role of Korean recruiters who tricked the same Korean people in Korea and the needy families who did not oppose even if they took their daughters is still a very difficult issue. Given that the expression'sex slavery' is a word that comes mainly from the context of chattel slavery, this word refers to the character of a comfort woman, which is different from the concept of possession, abuse and rape in a cruel imprisonment. The question of whether or not can be adequately explained has also been debated. Although the degree of force or coercion experienced by comfort women may vary, history scholars have discovered over the past decades that violence and intimidation were endemic elements. On the contrary, Professor Ramsey's argument seemed to intentionally simplify this complex problem. It can be said that “the Korean comfort women were prostitutes who went to the front at will.”
Along with the surrender of Japan and the end of Japanese colonial rule in Korea, Taiwan, Manchuria and the Western Pacific region following the end of World War II, 70 years of apology and denial of responsibility for Japan's atrocities committed during the war began. Japan signed the San Francisco Treaty of Strengthening with the Allied Powers in 1951 and recognized Korea's independence. Relations between the two countries were normalized with the basic treaty between Korea and Japan in 1965, and the two countries had “completely and finally resolved” the “profits, rights and interests [...] of each country,” and “measures [...] It was agreed that no arguments could be made regarding the []].\ There was no specific mention regarding comfort women women, so a conflict arose as to whether their claims were resolved later.
The comfort women issue has not been widely discussed in Korean society in the past, when sex crime victims were neglected and stigmatized. However, in the early 1990s, survivors began to share their experiences openly. In 1993, Japan announced the watershed “Kono Talk,” acknowledging that the Japanese military was involved in the process of establishing a comfort station and recruiting women “against their own intentions” and that “life in a comfort center was a terrible thing under compulsory circumstances”. Japan further unveiled “the will of apology and reflection from the heart”, promising “to face the truth of this history [...]” and “to remember these problems for a long time through history research and history education, and never make the same mistakes. He expressed a firm determination not to repeat it.” However, after the inauguration of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in 2006, Japan seemed to withdraw from the position of'Kono Talk'. In the words of Professor Alexis Duden of Connecticut University, a historian majoring in modern and contemporary Korean-Japanese history, Japan under the Abe regime has become an environment where "there is no room for objective historical exploration" in terms of comfort women. A clear example is the attempt by the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2014 to press McGraw-Hill to delete photos related to comfort women in world history textbooks. The publisher rejected the request of the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, citing research by scholars to establish historical facts. Former Prime Minister Abe lamented that "this textbook is being used in the United States because it is not possible to correct what needs to be protested without protesting."
In 2015, 20 American historians (one of the New Yorker writings, Gelani Cobb also participated) made a statement in the publication of the American Historical Association and said, “The Japanese government's attempt to revise the contents of recent history textbooks. I am amazed at this,” he voiced. They compared Japan's efforts to eradicate the atrocities committed during World War II with the efforts of several American Boards of Education to "rewrite textbooks to erase the story of African-American slaves." Professor Andrew Gordon of Harvard University in the field of modern and contemporary Japanese history also participated in the statement. In the same year, Professor Gordon and Professor Durdon promoted a statement related to comfort women apart from the above statement, and hundreds of scholars majoring in Japanese history from around the world participated in the statement. In commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, they said in a statement that "the evidence is clear that numerous women were arrested against their will and suffered terrible atrocities." Only by evaluating accordingly will you be able to create a correct history.” These historians advocated "freedom of historical inquiry" and urged governments to do the same.
On the other hand, in Korea, anger against Japan to reduce responsibility was accumulating, and occasionally this anger appeared as narrow-minded in front of the claim, rather than ‘the Japanese army aimed at guns and kidnapped Korean girls as sex slaves.’ In 2015, Professor Park Yoo-ha published a book on the role of Koreans at the time of recruitment of comfort women and the relationship between some comfort women imprisoned under “slave-like conditions” and the relationship between the Japanese military, and claims compensation for defamation from comfort women. He filed a lawsuit, and was prosecuted criminally by the prosecution. As some argued, Professor Park's book in her book did not mean that she did not acknowledge Japan's responsibility or denied the cruel suffering of comfort women. Professor Gordon Harvard University, along with 66 scholars from Japan and the United States, issued a statement and praised the academic achievements of Professor Park's book, saying, “I am very sorry and worried” for the South Korean government's criminal prosecution of Professor Park. In the end, Professor Park was judged for compensation in a lawsuit for claiming damages. In criminal trial, she was acquitted in a first-trial court that recognized her academic freedom, but she was convicted in an appeals trial and sentenced to a fine.
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In 2015, the two countries reached a new agreement with the support of the Obama regime, and Japanese Prime Minister Abe at the time expressed “from heart to heart of apology and reflection” to comfort women. Japan contributed 1 billion yen (approximately 10.8 billion won) to the South Korean fund as compensation for comfort women, and the two governments promised to "restrict mutual criticism and criticism in the international community." The two countries stated that the comfort women issue was "finally and irreversibly resolved."\ However, Korean comfort women held the position that the government had negotiated without any discussion. Former President Park Geun-hye, the first female president in South Korea, who was supposed to seek Japanese apology and compensation before the deaths of the remaining survivors, did not take into account the opinions of comfort women. In 2017, when former President Park Geun-hye was dismissed, and President Moon Jae-in announced that the negotiations concluded under the former regime "cannot solve the comfort women problem," the negotiations were virtually nullified in South Korea. Meanwhile, Japan has been fiercely opposed to the installation of statues of comfort women around the world. Japan filed a lawsuit for demolition of the statue erected outside Los Angeles, but lost, and after a monument was installed in San Francisco, the city of Osaka broke its sisterhood relationship with the city of San Francisco. Japan's voice grew even higher after a Korean court ruling that apologized to Japan and required them to pay compensation. This month, the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs website no longer mentions'Kono discourse', and a new content condemns the claim that cannot be said to be based on historical facts, such as the claim that'comfort women and'sex slaves' were taken by force'. Was added.
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The politics of the controversial Korea-Japan relations is also complicated, but apart from that, how Professor Ramsey came to such a conclusion with regard to the Korean comfort women was a question of embarrassment. Among the scholars who were asked by the International Review of Law and Economics earlier this month to comment on Professor Ramsey's thesis were Professor Andrew Gordon and another Harvard historian, Professor Carter Eckert. (I was also asked.) Professor Eckert and Professor Gordon decided to write a comment together. The two reviewed the footnotes of Professor Ramsey's thesis, and with respect to a Korean woman who was at a comfort station during the war, neither did the contract, nor any secondary sources that could specifically confirm the contents of such contracts, nor any statements from a third party to confirm the related contents. I found out that it wasn't quoted. One case in 1938, which is believed to be the closest to information on related contracts, was the form of a Japanese woman's “shakufu” work contract. “Shakufu” means a bar woman, and it is accepted as including sex work. In order to understand the meaning of the labor contract, we need to know the nature, remuneration, and duration of work. However, Eckert and Gordon tracked Ramsey's historical records, and found that neither written nor oral contracts could confirm information related to the terms and conditions of Korean women's contracts.
Prof. Eckert and Gordon reasoned that with a sample contract of employment of Japanese women before or during the war as a prostitute, it is reasonable to assume that Korean women would have contracted under similar terms or conditions and worked as sex workers on the front line for the Japanese military. I didn't think it was. The two also pointed out that even if Korean women signed a contract to work at a comfort station in person or through their families, they may not have known their sexual purpose at the time of recruitment, and in such a case, any contract could not be regarded as voluntary. Professor Eckert Gordon said in a statement that the word ``comfort place'' was not necessarily used as a sexual connotation prior to World War II, and during the same period, both Korean and Japanese media used the word for entertainment in local parks. Explained that it was used as a term referring to things like facilities, hotels, children's rest areas, and relaxation facilities such as hot springs. Professor Gordon also showed me a direct translation of an article published in the leading Japanese media in 1940. The article tells the story of a Japanese woman who had crossed over to northern China after seeing a “comfort woman” recruitment ad, and it was said that the woman was surprised to learn what it really was like when she got there. The reporter who wrote the article estimated that the reader may not know that the “comfort women” are sex workers.
Professor Eckert Gordon, who judged that he could not comment on Professor Ramsey's empirical arguments without examining the evidence, asked the editorial department of the International Legal Economics Review to withdraw the article, saying there was a "academic truth problem" in Professor Ramsey's thesis. Requested. A few days later, the journal published an article in'Expressing Concern' and informed the readers that "concerns have been raised about historical evidence" in relation to Professor Ramsey's thesis and "there is an investigation underway on the claim." .
When I asked Professor Ramsey directly, he said, "I don't have a Korean contract." He explained that, based on "a lot of debates in the historical record," in his 1991 paper on the indentured-servitude of Japan's pre-war prostitution, he was to "improve" her debate. In Professor Ram Zyer's thesis, which dealt with her content of prostitution before the war, there was no mention of sex workers on the front line or Korean comfort women women during World War II. Professor Ramsey said to me, "I thought it would be great if I could get a contract, but I couldn't find it," and "you won't find it." As he argued in his 1991 paper that most contracts related to prostitution in Japan before the war were voluntary labor rather than slavery contracts, Professor Ramsey said that Korean women had similar contracts with regard to working at wartime comfort stations. If so, I thought I would have judged that such work could be classified as spontaneous rather than sexual slavery.
Tessa Morris-Suzuki, a professor emeritus of the National University of Australia, an authority in the field of modern and contemporary Japanese history, also requested that her writings be withdrawn in the International Law Economics Review. Professor Morris-Suzuki wrote in an article sent to the above journal, “Professor Ramsey moved his research in the past from this space and historical background to that space and background. Now it has been transformed into an argument for the'comfort station' system during the war in the 1930s and 40s. Even though the system was operated in different times and places, and in completely different environments,” he said. It was also pointed out that Professor Ramsey's arguments and historical sources presented to support the arguments often contradicted each other. According to Professor Ramsey, "the Japanese government has set up a recruitment rule with plans to recruit only those who were already in the prostitution industry," citing two official Japanese documents. According to Professor Morris-Suzuki's confirmation, one document confirms that "some women were taken in a'near kidnapping manner'."
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Amy Stanley, professor of Japanese history at Northwestern University, who also published books on prostitution and women's companies in Japan, was not used by Ramsayer in his thesis, but there is already confirmed evidence that physical violence and threats were used to prevent women from fleeing from comfort stations. As a result, Ramsay said that his argument could not be established. Professor Stanley, in collaboration with four Japanese historians on three continents, wrote a 35-page document that lists examples of Ramsey's misinterpretation of Japanese sources and highlights his inaccurate citing practices. Like Professor Morris-Suzuki, Professor Stanley and his fellow scholars have found that there are many instances of contradiction between Professor Ram Zyer's arguments and the sources cited as supporting evidence. Among them, the part about a young Japanese girl who went to Borneo to become a prostitute is surprising. Professor Ramsey writes: He said, “When Osaki turned 10, he said that if a recruiter came and said he would go abroad, he would give him 300 yen in advance. The merchant did not try to lure Osaki. Even though he was 10 years old, Osaki knew what it meant.” (Professor Ramsey did not question whether the 10-year-old was capable of expressing consent to sexual intercourse.) Stanley and fellow scholars in a book quoted by Professor Ramsay, said the girl was actually a pimp. He confirmed that he was stating that he had resisted with the other girls by saying, "You didn't tell me that this was the case, and you brought us in and asked you to take a guest now, liar!" The girl recalled her past and said, “After the first night we were terrified. We didn't know that men and women did this. It was so terrible, and it was unbelievable.” All of Stanley's professors wondered that Ramsey was calling his employer the “owner” of Osaki while insisting on a voluntary contract system. (Professor Ramsey read the error raised by the above scholars in an email sent to me, and added, “I was puzzled and embarrassed,” and “I don't know what happened, but this seems to be my mistake.”)
Professor Michael Choi, an economist who teaches game theory at UCLA, is leading a move to urge economists to withdraw from Ramsay's thesis. Professor Choi said, “There is a certain academic standard that must be applied to any field, whether it is economy, history, sociology. When citing a material, one of those criteria is to quote it according to the content of the material.” Already, more than a thousand economists have signed Choi's statement, refusing to argue that economics or game theory justifies Ramsey's conclusion. Many of these are economists who have worked as journal editors. “Game theory principles can be used to interpret a variety of coercive situations, from crime and punishment to nuclear war. However, the introduction of game theory does not mean that there was no violent exploitation or looting. Nor can we take for granted the conclusion that it happened according to the agreement of the two sides. Game theory principles do not magically wrap up such reckless claims or give them authority.”
Northwestern Law School professor Alex Lee also signed the papers for economists. Professor Lee is one of more than 30 associate editors who participate in the peer review of the International Legal Economics Review. Professor Lee, who was not involved in the selection of Prof. Ram Zyer's thesis, was surprised to learn that Prof. Ram Zyer was making a claim that was close to generalization without a good basis. He contacted other editors and received permission from several historians majoring in modern and contemporary Korean-Japanese history to ask for opinions on the thesis. (Professor Lee has also contacted me.) A few days later, Professor Lee resigned from the International Legal Economics Review. In his statement, Prof. Lee expressed the opinion that "the decision to publish this article is a serious error in judgment, if viewed as good, and very irresponsible and unethical if viewed badly." "A journal that is not capable of evaluating this level of revisionist historical claims that could cause serious harm should not be accepted for publication in the first place," said Professor Lee. (The 『International Law and Economics Review』 did not respond to the request for comment.)
Talking with scholars who thoroughly analyzed Professor Ramsey's claims over the past three weeks, I was amazed at their dedication to upholding professional standards and procedures. Although Professor Ramsey's arguments were provocative and afflicted by many, the concern these scholars were more concerned with was whether the argument itself was true. Professor Eckert Gordon publicly defended the freedom of academic research and emphasized the follow-up of the evidence, even if the direction was uncomfortable or controversial, and the comfort women issue was no exception. Not only these people, but also other historians I spoke with were opposed to Professor Park Yoo-ha's sufferings, who argued about comfort women that could be weighed on the basis of evidence in his book. These historians also advocated the research of Professor C. Sarah So (Korean name Soh Jeong-hee). Professor So's multi-layered study, which examines the responsibilities of the Korean patriarchal society in the violent system of comfort women, was unfairly attacked by some saying that it was used as a weapon, while others said it was anti-Korean or gave Japan an indulgence. What was important from the researchers' point of view was the scholar's responsibility.
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Professor Ramsey sent me an e-mail so that I can confirm those who support him in Korea, Japan, and third countries. He informed him that there was a public statement condemning the "witch hunt" against him and that 15 Koreans had signed it. Among those who signed, four authors of 『Anti-Japanese Tribalism』(2019) were included, which claimed that the theory of sexual slavery was false in the case of comfort women. A former professor of economics at Seoul National University, where a video of a reporter's slap was taken, and a doctor who was beaten while leading a demonstration to demolish a statue of a comfort woman were among those who signed. In a statement, they pointed out that Professor Ramsey's thesis was "published in the international legal and economics review," a renowned international journal after appropriate evaluation including peer review. On February 8, six people who had a relationship with Japanese institutions, claiming to be self-proclaimed historians, wrote an open letter advocating the integrity of Professor Ramsey as a scholar, urging him not to "cancel" his research. Most of these do not appear to have history degrees, and are related to far-right groups that focus on denying Japanese atrocities during the war.
Professor Ramsey also showed a letter of support sent to the journal by two American scholars in the field of Japanese studies. The first was a letter of February 4 from Mary Elizabeth Berry, an emeritus professor at the University of California, Berkeley and a Japanese historian from the 16th and 7th centuries. Professor Barry expressed his opinion that Ramsey's thesis was "a great, accurate and carefully compiled study," and that he thinks his analysis reflects "the mainstream position of renowned scholars in Japan." However, after she read the documents pointing out the truthfulness of the thesis, Professor Barry said to me that they were "strong arguments," and she said, "Mark [Ram Zier] needs to answer properly. And in some cases, errors should be acknowledged.” Another letter of support, as of February 4, was also sent by David Weinstein, a professor of economics at Columbia University in Japan. In his letter of support, he wrote, "It is important that journals sometimes publish controversial articles based on facts and let the reader decide which arguments are persuasive." However, after reading the findings of historians, Professor Weinstein stated that it would be appropriate to withdraw if the editors judged that there was a serious error in the interpretation of the underlying facts but could not be caught in the review process.
I advocate for the researcher's right to express opinions that are not welcomed by the majority or personally disagree with them. However, there is only one thing that everyone agrees with through the Ramsey outbreak. It is that academic freedom comes with a responsibility to be properly grounded in evidence, especially when making factual claims. In the course of continuing investigation of Professor Ramsey's research, scholars have found in several recent papers that he has misused historical records in relation to a minority group that has suffered serious discrimination in Japan such as Burakumin, Okinawans, and Koreans, which are Japanese untouchable groups. found. David Amberus, a professor of Japanese social history at North Carolina State University, told us that along with other scholars, he is investigating the facts of Professor Ramsey's claim against Burakumin and Koreans, and has not yet disclosed the findings. Alon Harrell, a professor of law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, editor of the'Privateization' of the Cambridge Handbook last Saturday, together with co-editor Abby Hay Doffman, a professor at Tel Aviv University Law School, revised the manuscript for his part to Professor Ramsay. He told the Korean media that he had requested it. In the manuscript, Professor Ramzier questioned the claims of historians who estimated that 6,000 Koreans died during the Kanto Massacre in 1923, classified young Koreans as “high-risk criminals”, and Koreans committed arson and raped civilians. He repeats the rumors that he went on to go. "I thought Professor Ramsey knew history better than we do," said Professor Harrell, who admitted the responsibility, saying, "It was an ignorant and very regrettable mistake on our side." On Tuesday, the European Journal of Law and Economics, which previously published the paper that underpinned the manuscript of the Cambridge Handbook, revealed to readers that they were investigating concerns about the paper.
In an article to journal editors, Professor Morris-Suzuki said this was the "worst case of failure in terms of academic standards" of what he witnessed in his research field for 40 years throughout his research life. "There are significant weaknesses throughout the peer review process," he said. In particular, it may indicate a flaw in peer review in the field of law. Legal scholars, experts in methodology (doctrine analysis, legal interpretation, legal economics, etc.) or in real fields (contracts, torts, property), sometimes have their own historical contexts that they have never studied and language that they cannot speak. Articles in fields far from specialized fields are reviewed. This generalist approach, which is intellectually stimulating to law scholars and able to escape “their own world,” works only when there is trust in the integrity and rigor of individual scholars. Reevaluation will be required after Ramsey.
But if you think beyond the academic world, isn't it just a matter of ignoring a dissertation that has no basis? As Professor Morris-Suzuki said, “There are a lot of strange treatises by strange people in the world”. However, in the case of Professor Ramsey, "It is important to take a closer look at his writings because only Harvard's thesis gets a certain level of interest and recognition," said Professor Morris-Suzuki. In fact, the reaction of colleagues over the past few weeks was that before reading Professor Ramsey's thesis, they did not know if there were any other opinions other than the conventional wisdom about comfort women. Professor Morris-Suzuki sees this as a “really good precedent” to the realities of this era, which is not just academia, but also in the media and the Internet, "which is said to be true, but suffers from things that have no valid basis." Prof. Ramsayer's research was aimed at refuting the common theory that, according to his expressions, "is literally fiction," according to the general perception of the academic world, which pertains to "sexist, racist, and imperialism." Sheep were packed.
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Professor Morris-Suzuki used Ramsey's dissertation on comfort women as a case study to create a supplementary resource booklet to teach students how to support freedom of expression while maintaining the principle of truthfulness in the study. “If there is no basic principle, there will be no basis for rejecting the submitted manuscript, and even if the article lacks logical or factual basis, it should be treated the same as other papers. If that happens, it's easy to spend the rest of your life arguing about conspiracy theories or fake news without an intellectual base. In the simplest and most straightforward way, it would mean that if you don't have the standard for research, you can pack everything up and go home. No matter what you say or what you claim to be true, it will make sense in its own way.”
Controversy over comfort women is nothing new in both Korea and Japan. If there is anything new, it is the university that is respected in terms of academic research by many people around the world where the familiar extremist view that denies the past flows. Daniel Snyder, an expert in Korea and Japan, is studying the impact of the controversy over the past history of war at Stanford University on the international situation in Asia. Snyder has been a reporter since the 1980s, delivering news from both Korea and Japan. According to him, Professor Ramsey's claim in the “Japan Forward” was “exactly the claim of the revisionist far-right in Japan.” Snyder gave me the remarks of a high-ranking Japanese Foreign Ministry official that said that the study of Professor Ramsey was "another reason that Korea's allegations are false." After hearing the results of historians' review of Professor Ramsey's writing, the Japanese official made it clear to Snyder that the Japanese government had no intention of embracing Professor Ramsey's controversial claims. However, Snyder said, "The more Koreans drive Ramsey into a corner, the more people in Japan will try to beat him." This week, Japan's leading daily newspaper Yukan Fuji reported that a Harvard professor's academic research proved that comfort women were not sexual slaves, but licensed prostitutes. The media also reported that frantic Koreans put pressure on Harvard professors to criticize Professor Ramsey.
During the 75 years of discord from the end of World War II and Japanese colonialism to the present day, Korea has been dissatisfied with the fact that Japan is not truly responsible for the past, and Japan keeps moving the goal to Japan. He said it was Korea and came to the recognition that Korea would not be satisfied anyway. This deterioration in relations between the two countries is unlikely to be as close and timely as the controversy surrounding Professor Ramsey. There is no reason to believe that all of this has intentions. As I approached the end of this journey, I contacted Professor Ramsay again to see if there was room for acceptance in each other's position. At this point, I had already spent a whole month examining his sentences, logic, and historical records with the help of the contents that Japanese expert scholars had already devoted a lot of time to thoroughly reviewed. Professor Ram Zyer said that he is not the time now and that he will explain when he is ready. It was well understood.
Korean-Japanese historian Alexis Duden was one of the scholars who were asked to comment on Professor Ramsey's thesis. Professor Durdon replied that the study of past cruelty is to prevent similar occurrences in the future, and "not to abuse history by weaponizing it for the present purpose." Professor Durdon told of a meeting with Korean comfort women women in the 2000 Japanese military sexual slave war criminal women's international court. “There was a man whose tongue had been cut off, and one of them literally lifted a hanbok jeogori in front of me to show one of his chest that had been cut off by the river.” Professor Durdon said that the trial at the time was "a great watershed not only for understanding why oral statements are necessary for a shift in the legal approach, but also for collecting historical evidence" in the study of crimes against humanity. In some ways, this statement of atrocities seems irrefutable. However, historians, such as Professor Durdon, constantly seek ways to verify while repeating processes such as denial of past history, political conflict, and diplomatic encounters in order to find knowledge of the indescribable tragedy.
Last week, at Harvard Law School, there was a lecture by Lee Yong-soo, who was conscripted as a comfort woman at the age of 15, and who is now in her 90s. A few days before this event, hosted by Asian American students, students who criticized me, law school and East Asian Studies professors, and Professor Ramsey received several emails from a small South Korean far-right group advocating Professor Ramsey. . In the e-mail that came to me, expressing my opinion on this issue rather than sticking to my role as a legal and economics expert while emphasizing my background of Korean descent is "just interfering with rational debate" and helping to "solve the Korean-Japanese conflict" I said it wouldn't be. The email even claimed that her grandmother Lee Yong-soo was a “fake comfort woman” and that Harvard should boycott her grandmother's lecture event. Grandma Lee Yong-soo wanted to directly comment on her Ram Zyer incident. Through her interpretation, the grandmother said that thanks to her Professor Ram Jie, her interest in the history of the comfort women suddenly increased, she said, she said, "I don't know if Professor Ram Jyer is maybe a blessing." She said, the more Japan denies history, the more attention is drawn to it. She said she also hopes that this grandmother will be able to establish the truth about what happened before her death, she will refer the comfort women issue to the International Court of Justice by both Korea and Japan. She said, "I hate sin, not people."
(Transferred to the chapter journey.)
This article is a translation of an article entitled ‘Seeking the True Story of the Comfort Women’ in The New Yorker on February 25, 2021.
Genie Seok Gerson (Korean name Seok Ji-young) is a Harvard Law School professor working as an outside writer for The New Yorker.

Jeannie Suk Gersen is a contributing writer to The New Yorker and a professor at Harvard Law School.
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