[정치]Harvard University Ramsey’s thesis fact check for’comfort women who are prostitutes’

◇ PD Kim Yang-won (hereinafter referred to as Yang-won Kim)> It is time to check facts among the news that took place over the past week. Fact Check Linked to the fact checker Song Young-hoon of the media news top. Hi?

◆ News Top Reporter Song Young-hoon (hereinafter Song Young-hoon)> Hello.

◇ Kim Yang-won> In his thesis, it was controversial because he wrote the victim of the Japanese military comfort women as a prostitute, Professor Ramsayer of Harvard University in the United States… Historically, it was too unilateral and distorted, so I thought it would disappear immediately, but the wave continues. Let’s check the facts. Shall we check this claim that’the comfort woman was a prostitute’?

◆ Song Young-Hoon> The controversial thesis is a thesis titled “Prostitution Contract in the Pacific War,” written by Professor John Mark Ramsey of Harvard Law School. In the paper, Ramsey argues, “The comfort women were not forced to be dragged, but voluntarily contracted and followed by prostitutes.”
By the way, this claim has already been a fact-checked, in other words, it turns out to be enforceable. To check some of the main arguments, it is first of all that “it is not the Japanese government or the Japanese military that has tricked women and dragged them away, but the private recruiters of Joseon.”
But it is not true. At that time, the Japanese military and the Japanese government were involved in the establishment and operation of comfort stations, such as requesting the recruitment of comfort women from a business operator, and the Japanese government has recognized that there was a compulsory nature.
On August 4, 1993, Japan’s Secretary of State Yohei Kono said, “The comfort stations were prepared at the request of the military authorities at the time, and the former Japanese forces were directly or indirectly involved in the establishment, management and transfer of comfort women.” Revealed through.

◇ Kim Yang-won> Japan already admitted that it had been directly or indirectly involved in the operation of Japanese military comfort stations in the 1993 “Go-no-Talk”.

◆ Song Young-hoon> Yes. At the time, the discourse said, “The recruitment of comfort women was mainly handled by the service provider who received the request of the military, but even in such cases, there were many cases of recruitment against their own intentions, such as by cowardice and coercion. Moreover, it was revealed that there were times when government officials and others directly participated in this.” On the same day, a data released by the Japanese government as a result of an investigation, “On the so-called military comfort women issue,” stated that “Most of the comfort stations were managed by private companies, but in some areas there were cases in which the Japanese military directly managed comfort stations.” Included.
Of course, there have been some movements to deny or correct the high labor discourse since then, but it is true that the Japanese government’s official position on the comfort women issue continues to this day. But Professor Ramsey didn’t reflect this.

◇ Kim Yang-won> The official position of the Japanese government is not reflected properly. Go-no-do talk 18 years ago is still Japan’s official position, right?

◆ Song Young-hoon> Yes. Last month, on January 29th, Japanese Minister Kato Katsunobu held a press conference. During the press conference, there was a question about a request by the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology that a Japanese far-right group asked the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology to delete the expression “military comfort women” used in some middle school textbooks. While Minister Kato was answering this, when asked by the reporter,’Does it need to revise Kono’s discourse,’ the Japanese government explained that the basic stance of the Japanese government was “that it is succeeding,” and denied reconsideration.

◇ Kim Yang-won> The Japanese government also announced that the victims of comfort women were forcibly taken away, but Professor Ramsey’s argument was wrong from the facts.

◆ Song Young-hoon> Yes, I selected and viewed the material. Professor Ramsey is even a Harvard Law School professor. However, I don’t understand that the paper was published without even confirming this fact.
In the thesis, Professor Ramsey also argued that the comfort women were paid enough money for their work, and that they could quit if they wanted, that is, it was a normal contract and went according to the contract.
However, there is also a lot of evidence that the contract was not actually followed. Some Japanese scholars say that even if there is a contract, it is difficult to regard it as free will. Professor Ramsey brought only what he needed out of several cases.

◇ Kim Yang-won> By the way, isn’t Harvard University the most prestigious university in the world? It is curious that a professor at Harvard University has made thesis on the claim of the extreme right even in Japan, where this fact has not been confirmed. How is the reaction at Harvard University?

◆ Song Young-hoon> Professors at Harvard University, who have studied Korean and Japanese history, are protesting. On the 17th, Professor Carter Eckert of the Department of East Asian Language and Culture at Harvard University and Professor Andrew Gordon of the Department of History issued a statement. [국제법 경제리뷰]He pointed out that there is a problem with Professor Ramsey’s thesis’Prostitution Contract in the Pacific War’, which will be published in the March issue of the journal. Professor Eckert is majoring in Korean history, and Professor Gordon is majoring in modern Japanese history.
They reviewed Professor Ramsey’s thesis at the request of the journal editor, and traced the citations, and found that Professor Ramsey wrote the thesis without confirming a single actual contract signed between the comfort women victim and the recruitment agency. It. The faculty pointed out, “I can’t figure out how to use extremely strong expressions for unread contracts and make credible arguments,” and “there’s a terribly violent part that undermines academic integrity.” He also criticized Professor Ramsey’s thesis for not having documented third-party statements or oral testimony related to Korean comfort women victims. They are urging the journal to withdraw from publication based on the results after investigating Professor Ramsey’s thesis.

◇ Kim Yang-won> Yes, however, the President of Harvard University also made an opinion as if advocating Professor Ramsey’s argument as’academic freedom’?

◆ Song Young-hoon> Yes, but in academia, criticism seems to be appearing more than advocacy. Mark Peterson, an emeritus professor at Brigham Young University, one of the world’s greatest masters of Korean studies, said in a column titled’Comfort Women, Japan That Stimulates Korea Again’, “The problem with Professor Ramsey’s thesis is how victims were forced or deceived into comfort women “It wasn’t dealt with heavily, and it was limited to legal topics that only lawyers could read.”
In addition, an interview by a former White House ethics lawyer Richard Painter with a domestic broadcaster became a hot topic. Attorney Painter is currently a professor at the University of Minnesota Law School, where he studied history at Harvard. His career is quite similar to Professor Ramsey.

In the interview, Professor Painter said, “I am convinced that the paper should be discarded, and that I reviewed it myself, but that I could not find any academic validity. At the same time, I pointed out how I would feel if I analyzed the Japanese atomic bombing in a legal and economical way.

◇ Kim Yang-won> In academia, it is generally believed that Professor Ramzier did not make a comprehensive judgment, but rather harmed the truth with a biased judgment.

◆ Song Young-hoon> Yes. There is a term cherry picking. Cherry picking is used in a negative sense in logic or social science. It is an error of ignoring most of the data that may be disadvantageous to one’s argument among the various cases or evidence related to a specific situation and selecting only the case that is favorable to his argument.
The most common example of this is confirmation bias. Cherry picking is also used to select data or refer to a group of data that enables research or research to produce the desired results. Data that poses a threat to a given conclusion is often discarded as contaminated data. Research or papers in this way can be different from the facts or confusing.

◇ Kim Yang-won> Now, not only the comfort women issue, but the thesis that seems to have justified the massacre of Koreans after the Great Kanto Earthquake are also controversial?

◆ Young-Hoon Song> Another paper by Professor Ramsey,’Vigilantes: Japanese Police, Korean Massacre and Private Security Company’, contains content that the use of private police force is justified under abnormal circumstances. As an example, I heard the use of private police force during the 1923 earthquake in the Kanto region of Japan. It is true that the Japanese vigilantes killed Koreans in Japan after the Great Kanto Earthquake, but the Japanese responded because the Koreans committed arson and other crimes.
First of all, it is a testament to date that Koreans set fires and poison wells at the time of the Great Kanto Earthquake. . Then, the demographic statistics that the proportion of males was much higher among Koreans in Japan at the time, and among them, there were many young men. “Young men have a high demographic crime rate anywhere in the world,” and regarded all Koreans in Japan as a preliminary criminal group. In addition, the independence movement against Japan was included in the crime at the time. In addition, it was said that the number of deaths was inflated at the time, but most of the supporting data were published by the Japanese government-general at the time.

◇ Kim Yang-won> When I heard it, it was very similar to what Japan’s far right forces claim. Professor Ramsey is American, right?

◆ Song Young-hoon> Yes, by the way, Ramsay has a lot to do with Japan. First of all, according to the Harvard University website, his official position is Harvard University’s “Japanese Law Research Mitsubishi Professor”. It is a researcher sponsored by a Japanese company. It was confirmed that I actually spent my teenage years in Japan. Currently, my major is Japanese law. In 2018, he was awarded the Japanese government’s medal of “Rukil Heavy Water” in recognition of his contributions to promoting the Japanese economy and society. He is one of the leading pro-Japanese scholars in the United States.

◇ Kim Yang-won> Yes. Okay, you said that Professor Ramsey’s official position introduced on the Harvard University website is’Professor Mitsubishi’. Is that new position also exist?

◆ Song Young-hoon> There was a time when Japan quarreled for the second largest country in the world. In the 1970s, Mitsubishi donated $1 million in that amount to Harvard. It was 50 years ago, and at the time it was over 1 billion won. With this money, I made a seat as a seat professor studying Japan, and in 1998 I was promoted to a full professor. It was confirmed that the very first beneficiary was Professor Ramsey. Mitsubishi continued its sponsorship afterwards. It has not been disclosed since the donation of $100 million in the 1980s.

For us, Mitsubishi is a war criminal company that ignores compensation for forced labor. To put it more extreme, there is a claim that “the money earned from forced labor by the Koreans was sprinkled on American universities to cultivate scholars to represent their position and to make research papers.”
Suddenly, I wondered if Harvard had such a position as’Professor Samsung’ or’Professor Hyundai Motors’.

◇ Yangwon Kim> Had our company sponsored Harvard University a lot, would the distortion of history be different… It’s a bitter imagination. The next fact check is also related to Japan.

◆ Song Young-hoon> Yes, on the 13th, there was a strong earthquake of 7.3 on the Richter scale off the coast of Fukushima, Japan. Then, on the Japanese internet, an article like’A Korean or a black man poisoned a well’ appeared.
Japan’s Mainichi Shimbun reported on the 14th that “the strong earthquakes in Fukushima and Miyagi Prefectures were filled with discriminatory remarks, rumors, and uncertain information on Twitter and YouTube.” In 18 minutes after the earthquake on the 13th, a netizen posted a post on Twitter saying,’I saw the Koreans burning poison in the Fukushima well!’
Mainichi said, “These remarks mimic the rumors that’the Koreans detoxified the wells’ that spread during the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake, and the same phenomenon happens every time a disaster.”

◇ Kim Yang-won> Fortunately, the Japanese media did a fact check. What was the reaction of netizens?

◆ Song Young-hoon> It looks different from a hundred years ago that there were also posts in the article commenting on “Let’s not be fooled by fake news” and encouraging magnetism. Many Japanese netizens poured out criticism. One netizen said, “It is the worst incitement to discrimination. I can’t forgive it for the shame of the Japanese.” Another netizen wrote, “This tweet is really bad, and we shouldn’t forget that many Koreans were murdered because of this fake news.”

◇ Kim Yang-won> Even in Japan, rich netizens have seen fake news spread. Fortunately, the. I’ll listen to this today. Thank you.

◆ Song Young-hoon> Thank you.

◇ Kim Yang-won> It was news top Song Young-hoon fact checker.