hankyoreh

Lee Yong-soo, a survivor of sexual slavery by the Japanese military, speaks during an online seminar held by the Harvard Asian Pacific American Law Students Association on Feb. 16. (Screenshot from the webinar)

Lee Yong-soo, a former comfort woman, advised students at Harvard University not to pay attention to Harvard Law School professor J. Mark Ramseyer, who wrote a paper that portrayed the comfort women as voluntary sex workers.

“Just ignore that man,” said Lee, a 93-year-old survivor of the military brothels maintained by the Japanese military during World War II.

Lee commented during a virtual seminar hosted by the Harvard Asian Pacific American Law Students Association on Feb. 16.

“At the same time, I kind of see this professor’s remarks as a wakeup call, since we haven’t been making any progress [on the comfort women issue] despite our efforts,” Lee said.

In short, Ramseyer’s arguments may be worthless, but they have brought more attention to the comfort women issue.

Lee also repeated her appeal to the South Korean government to raise the comfort women issue at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), an appeal she’d made during a press conference the previous day.

“When the Japanese took over Korea, they had no respect for the law, dragging off young girls and acting as if everything belonged to them, and they’re still like that today. I’m earnestly asking President Moon to take Japanese Prime Minister Suga to the International Court of Justice and to fully deal with this issue,” she said.

“After we win our case, I’ll take you all to President Moon and introduce you to him,” Lee said.

Students at Harvard University organized the seminar in response to news about Ramseyer’s article.

Lillian Sing, co-chair of the US human rights organization Comfort Women Justice Coalition, noted during the seminar that Ramseyer hadn’t even bothered to talk to the surviving comfort women or listen to their stories while writing about the issue. Sing said that people like Ramseyer served as mouthpieces for Japan.

Another speaker in the seminar was Mike Honda, a former member of the US House of Representatives. He played a leading role in passing a resolution about the comfort women in 2007. Honda said that Harvard University should stop taking money from Mitsubishi and cut off funding for Ramseyer’s professorship.

Ramseyer is the Mitsubishi Professor of Legal Studies at Harvard University. The position is funded by Mitsubishi, a Japanese company that committed war crimes in World War II.

“These witnesses of history are still with us, but Ramseyer didn’t refer to any of them in his paper. I planned this event so that we’d have a good record of Lee Yong-soo’s testimony,” said Janet Park, a 27-year-old student at Harvard Law School who organized the event, in an interview with the Hankyoreh.

“When students encounter Ramseyer’s paper, their first reaction is shock. The whole thing is just unreal — the argument of the paper is so absurd and the quality so poor that you can hardly believe it was written by a professor at Harvard Law School,” Park said.

By Hwang Joon-bum, Washington correspondent

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