New York Times Service
February 26, 2021
SEOUL, South Korea The students and the survivor were divided by two generations and 7,000 miles, but they met on Zoom to discuss a common goal: turning a Harvard professor’s widely disputed claims about sexual slavery during World War II into a teachable moment.
A recent academic journal article by the professor in which he described as “prostitutes” the Korean and other women forced to serve Japan’s troops prompted an outcry in South Korea and among scholars in the United States.
It also offered a chance, on the Zoom call last week, for the aging survivor of the Japanese Imperial Army’s brothels to tell her story to a group of Harvard students, including her case for why Japan should issue a full apology and face international prosecution.
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Prominent Harvard Professor Pilloried for Peddling Revisionist History About Wartime ‘Comfort Women’ There are three big Japanese right-wing talking points and Ramseyer has parroted them all.
A noted American professor at Harvard Law School has been denounced both at home and internationally after publishing an academic paper arguing that claims about Korean women enslaved by Japanese military forces as “comfort women” during the second world war are historically untrue.
In January, I was outlining an article I hoped to write about a recent judgment by a South Korean court ordering Japan to pay compensation for atrocities committed during the Second World War against “comfort women,” women and girls who were transported to war-front “comfort stations” to provide sexual services to soldiers in the Imperial Japanese Army. The women were taken by force or entrapped by deception in many countries in and beyond Asia, but a large number came from Korea, which, at the time, was a colony of Japan. Estimates of the number of victims have ranged widely, from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands. On January 23rd, Japan announced that the Korean court’s judgment, which ordered a compensation of ninety-one thousand and eight hundred dollars to be paid to each of the twelve Korean comfort women who were plaintiffs in the case (seven of whom had died since it was filed, in 2013), was “extremely regrettable and absolutely unacceptable.” Japan sai
Non-Korean victims, scholars, civic groups join protest against Ramseyer s paper on sex slavery koreatimes.co.kr - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from koreatimes.co.kr Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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