NEW DELHI: Two back-to-back articles – one in a Japanese newspaper and another in an academic law journal by J. Mark Ramseyer, the Mitsubishi Professor of Japanese Legal Studies at Harvard Law School characterizing the comfort women as prostitutes, has provoked widespread Korean anger and fueled bitterness between the two Asian giants Japan and South Korea.

A large-scale resentment prevails in the Korean community, and the law professor has been accused of rejecting the historical consensus on comfort women, and also for ignoring extensive historical evidence in claiming that the “comfort women” were not sex slaves but instead were willing and well-compensated prostitutes.

In January, Prof. Ramseyer wrote an op-ed in a Japanese newspaper Japan Forward saying the “comfort-women-sex-slave story” as “pure fiction.” Japan Forward is the English-language news and opinion site by Sankei Shimbun, one of Japan’s top newspapers.

He later published another article ” Contracting for sex in the Pacific War” in the March edition of an academic journal, the International Review of Law and Economics, and characterized comfort women as prostitutes, terming them as rational economic actors who were able to negotiate and command high remuneration for their sexual labors.

Prof Ramseyer went on to write that the women were volunteers and not “sex slaves,” and there was no coercion from the Japanese government in recruiting the women.

These articles are being criticized not only in South Korea but also in the United States. A section of scholars has said that he did not provide any proof or evidence that can support his claim.

Read full story here: https://www.asiancommunitynews.com/harvard-prof-accused-of-provoking-korean-anger-by-rejecting-historical-consensus-comfort-women/