The Harvard University newspaper criticized Professor Mark Ramsey, who claimed that the’comfort women voluntarily engaged in sex trafficking’.
Harvard Law School Professor Mark Ramsey wrote a thesis “Pacific War Prostitution Contract” scheduled for publication in an international journal in March. The thesis argues that the comfort women signed a prostitution contract and engaged in prostitution, and is an extension of prostitution recognized under government regulations. If there was a problem in this process, it was also included that it was the fault of the Korean recruiter, not the Japanese government.
On the 7th, Harvard Crimson, an in-school newspaper at Harvard University, criticized Professor Ramsey’s argument with an article titled “Professor Harvard’s thesis that the comfort women volunteered caused international debate. Crimson said that Korean and American historians and jurists had many flaws in Ramsey’s thesis, and that the sources they used to support the claims were questionable.
In particular, Carter J Eckerty, professor of Korean history at Harvard University, criticized in an e-mail statement that “Ramzier’s thesis is enormously lacking empirically, historically, and morally.” Currently, Professor Eckerty is known to be working with fellow Harvard history professor Andrew Gordon to prepare a journal that refutes Ramsey’s claims.
In addition, Professor Alexis Durdon Connecticut, a student of Professor Ramsay in the 1990s, also criticized Ramsay’s argument. Professor Durdon, who teaches Korean and Japanese history at the university, said he was shocked to receive the article from Professor Ramsey in December. “There’s a problem with the context,” Duden criticized, “it’s wrong from the concept, not understanding what actually happened.”
Richard Painter, a former White House ethics attorney, a law school professor at the University of Minnesota, also raised questions through Twitter. Painter wrote, “Is it just contractual sexual exploitation? What happens when abstract theories and alternative facts distort real facts?”
Ramsey argued that “the Japanese military comfort women system is essentially an extension of the licensed prostitution system implemented in Japan.”
According to Professor Yuji Hosaka of Sejong University, it is completely different from the brothels run by the Japanese military during the forcible mobilization of World War II. Professor Noah R. Feldman 92 of Harvard Law School, who studied’comfort women and contract theory’, also joined the criticism, saying, “Ramzier’s claim is completely wrong.”
Korean students attending Harvard University asked Professor Ramsay for apology and correction. On the 4th, the Harvard Law School Korean Student Association announced that it plans to request a petition for an apology, saying, “I strongly condemn the fact that human rights violations and war crimes were intentionally deleted.”
On the controversy, Professor Ramsey said, “I am responsible for the students, so I will be willing to talk to them about my thesis.” However, the professor drew a line saying, “I have no plans to proceed with research on this subject.”
YTN PLUS Reporter Jeong Yoon-joo
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