The Uncomfortable Debate on Comfort Women
Statue of a Korean comfort woman in Berlin. (Flickr Commons)
Harvard Professor John Mark Ramseyer’s recent paper, “Contracting for Sex in the Pacific War,” drew international controversy last month for his claim that Korean “comfort women” — sex slaves to the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II—were contracted sex workers in Japan’s prostitution system. The controversy is complex because it lies at the intersection of two murky debates: academic integrity versus freedom, and historical reparations versus diplomatic reconciliation.
Academic integrity or cancel culture?
Ramseyer’s claim contradicts numerous testimonies of comfort women and comprehensive reports published by the United Nations, Amnesty International, and scholars in Korea, Japan, and the United States that indicate comfort women were involuntarily enslaved.
Nonetheless, criticisms about the dominant narrative of comfort women are not new: the narrative frames Imperial Japan as the perpetrator and Korea as the helpless victim, which erases the nuance of the reality of the comfort women system. In “The Comfort Women: Sexual Violence and Postcolonial Memory in Korea and Japan,” Korean-American anthropologist C. Sarah Soh argues that both Japanese colonialism and Korean patriarchy shaped the comfort women system. Some young Korean women were forced into sexual slavery by Korean procurers, and others entered the system after fleeing abusive homes. Though some scholars may disagree with Soh’s conclusion, most recognize the quality of her historical research, supplemented by a diverse range of primary testimonies from survivors.
By contrast, Ramseyer’s research methodology and academic integrity have come under scrutiny. His position title alone—the Mitsubishi Professor of Japanese Legal Studies at Harvard Law School—draws suspicion from Korean scholars. Though Ramseyer believes that Mitsubishi Group donated $1.5 million to Harvard in the 1970s to establish his position, he insists that the conglomerate has no influence over his current professorship.
A map of the Japanese advance in World War II, otherwise known as the Pacific War when referring to the Indo-Pacific region, from 1937 to 1942 (Wikipedia Commons).
Japanese history scholar Andrew Gordon and Korean history scholar Carter Eckert have issues with the lack of citations in Ramseyer’s paper. Ramseyer claims that both Korean and Japanese women signed contracts with the Japanese army. However, Gordon and Eckert only found Japanese contracts in Ramseyer’s footnotes; he references no contracts with Korean comfort women, nor secondary sources that confirm the existence of Korean contracts. Even if such contracts did exist, Gordon and Eckert argue that Korean comfort women may have been unaware of the sexual nature or degree of exploitation these agreements entailed.
Not all scholars support Gordon and Eckert’s challenge of Ramseyer’s academic integrity. In an open letter, six Japan-based academics labeled the criticism of his paper as “cancel culture.” They expressed support for his work as “well within the academic and diplomatic mainstream” and noted his “linguistic and analytical talents.” Notably, however, they make no reference to the robustness (or lack thereof) of his historical sources. These scholars also brought academic freedom into the controversy. Katsuoka Kanji of Meisei University even said, “If they [Harvard University] lose freedom of speech, I have to judge that no freedom of speech exists in the United States.”
Other academics, without endorsing Ramseyer’s article, called for more scholarly debate on the topic. Joseph Yi and Joe Phillips, both based in South Korea, claim that South Korea’s “restriction of research… has fostered a groupthink” about the comfort women issue. Instead of censoring his article, Yi and Phillips believe critical discourse can allow Koreans and students to become aware of arguments and data that do not fit into the dominant “victim-centered” narrative.
Lee Yong-soo, a former victim of the Japanese brothels, told a webinar hosted by the Harvard Asian Pacific American Law Students Association to ignore Ramseyer’s remarks. However, she considers the paper a “blessing in disguise,” as the controversy draws attention to former comfort women’s demands for Japan to issue a full apology. Clearly, the academic nature of Ramseyer’s paper does not preclude it from affecting the lived experiences of war victims.
A Boom and Bust Relationship
The Ramseyer controversy comes one month after a judge from the Seoul Central District Court ordered the Japanese government to pay reparations to 12 former comfort women. The South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs expressed its respect for the court ruling.
The ruling, however, is mostly symbolic. Japanese officials, including Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, rejected the ruling. Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu called the ruling “extremely regrettable” and “absolutely unacceptable,” maintaining the government’s official position of denialism and trivialization on the issue of comfort women.
The ruling and the Korean and Japanese governments’ conflicting responses demonstrate that Japan’s war atrocities will remain an obstacle to an amicable diplomatic relationship between the two countries. The countries reached a “final and irreversible resolution” in 2015 in which Japan apologized and agreed to set up an $8.3 million foundation to care for former comfort women. Professor Leif-Eric Easley of Ewha Women’s University said that Tokyo would consider the ruling—and other similar ones— “an escalation in a pattern of weaponizing history and breaking international agreements,” which could complicate Biden’s “plans for trilateral cooperation to deal with North Korea and China.”
A similar case in 2018 supports Easley’s predictions. South Korea’s Supreme Court upheld a decision for Japan to compensate four victims of forced labor during World War II. In addition to verbally criticizing the ruling, Japan also restricted exports of chemicals necessary to produce semiconductors and displays.
Lee Yong-soo believes that only the International Court of Justice (ICJ) can objectively resolve the comfort women issue. But as the 2018 forced labor dispute demonstrates, the South Korean and Japanese governments are unlikely to agree on taking the matter to the ICJ. In the interim, as both countries desire improved economic and diplomatic ties but stubbornly latch onto their respective World War II narratives, bilateral relations will continue to boom and bust.