The fable of “forced abduction of comfort women” is finally imploding.
The reality of the comfort women was that they were ordinary sex workers.
Lee Woo-yeon, co-author of Anti-Japan Tribalism
Criticism against Professor Ramseyer’s Article

Professor Mark Ramseyer at Harvard University stated in his article, “Contracting for sex
in the Pacific War,” in International Review of Law and Economic that the relationshipbetween comfort women and comfort stations was contractual. A group of American andSouth Korean scholars have criticized the professor’s article. The core of their criticism
is that there are no contracts or pieces of “paper” to substantiate the contractualrelationship. Underlying their comment is the fact that they do not understand thedifference in contractual cultures between that of European and American countries,
where contracts are written, and that of Korea, where people tended to make oral contracts.
The criticism that there is no paper contract suggests that there was no contract at all in
the first place. The critics argue, “There was no contract concluded, and so there could nowritten contract.” The common perception shared by Professor Ramseyer’s critics is thatwomen were forcibly abducted by the Japanese military, police and government officials
and were made to become comfort women, and not by a contract.
Critics claim that there is a mountain of evidence, “grounds for their confidence,” in theirsupport—"testimonies from victim former comfort women”; “confession by a Japaneseperpetrator, Yoshida Seiji”; a Japanese Army document instructing “forcible abduction”;
the 1993 Kono Statement expressing an “apology” by the Japanese Government; theCoomaraswamy Report issued by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights andother reports by Amnesty International, the International Commission of Jurists and otherNGOs. However, among these “grounds for their confidence,” the only thing that might
be considered “valid” are the stories of the former comfort women. The rest are either
false or not based on primary sources but solely on the statements of former comfortwomen.
Reports issued by international organizations were based on either testimony of former
comfort women, Yoshida Seiji’s story, documents from the Japanese Army or the Kono
Statement. The Kono Statement was issued as a desperate, ill-conceived measure by the1Japanese Government, in response to those who claimed that the comfort women issue
was proven given the testimonies from both victims and perpetrators, and Japanesemilitary documents. Later, however, the Japanese military documents in question proved
to have nothing to do with an order for “forcible abduction” of anyone. Japanese military
documents referring to “forcible abduction” were not found in Japanese archives. Yoshida
Seiji so-called confession has proven to be completely fictitious. In Japan, the Asahi
Newspaper solemnly reported Yoshida’s fiction—only to ended up retracting all reporting
involving Yoshida’s fiction, thereby damaging the newspaper’s credibility. At first glance,
it looks as if evidence abounds, but, in fact, in the end, one is left with the stories of theformer comfort women.
So can we believe their claim that “they were forcibly abducted to be made comfortwomen”?
Victims’ testimony polluted by political intention
When former comfort women came forth early in the 1990s, their statements said nothing
about “forced abduction.” They did say that they were deceived by Korean brokers orsold by their parents and became comfort women. However, as the comfort women issuebecame a social and political issue, and then developed into a diplomatic problem
between South Korea and Japan, the comfort women changed their testimonies andstarted to claim that they were coerced into being comfort women. Their claims werepolitically polluted. Let me mention one example.
Now being treated like a national treasure and acting as if she were an a former
independence fighter, former comfort woman Lee Yong Soo appeared in a KBS (Korean
Broadcasting System) program on August 15, 1992. When the emcee asked her how shecame to become a comfort woman, she answered:“I was 16 years old at that time. My family was so poor that I had hardly any wearable
clothes. One day, someone came and gave me a new dress and a pair of new shoes. I was
so happy with the present and followed the man without knowing anything.”
Her narrative refers to a typical case of a kidnapping committed by a Korean. However,Ms. Lee Yong Soo told a completely different story at a hearing held on February 16,
2007 in the U.S. House of Representatives which she attended as a witness. She stated2the following, which greatly facilitated the adoption by the U.S. House of Representatives
a resolution condemning Japan:“A military man came into my house with a woman, held my shoulder with one hand andcovered my mouth with the other, tapped me on the back and carried me away. I am aliving history.”
The biggest flaw of the former comfort women’s “testimonies” is the lack of consistency,
as this episode illustrates.
This is a serious problem as there are no objective methods to verify their statements. An
official document indicating Japanese authorities’ involvement in “forcible abduction”
has yet been found, nor has a record left by a third party, including civilians, been found
who might have witnessed coercion, nor testimony to that effect. The pro-coercion
advocates claim that “200,000 women” were forcibly abducted, yet not a single piece ofevidence has been presented to substantiate this, for the past 30 years. One can only
conclude that their “testimonies” are not at all trustworthy.
Multiple procedures for personal identification needed in order to become a comfort
woman
Professor Alexis Dudden, Faculty of History, University of Connecticut, who has led thecriticism against Professor Ramseyer and became famous in Korea, stated on a TV
program, “Without papers to back it up or without evidential materials, any assertion
cannot be true.” He used words such as “typical” “cruel” and “fraud.” I wonder if the“testimonies” of the former comfort women cleared Professor Dudden’s threshold.
If there were no “forced abductions” by Japanese authorities, how and why did women
become comfort women for the Japanese Army? There were cases where a Korean
recruiter said to a woman, “I will find a good job for you,” (recruiter fraud) and took thewoman without telling her that she was going to work as a comfort women or deceived
her parents into selling their daughter. In such cases, there was no employment contractconcluded or upfront cash was not paid or paid less than in the case where it was agreed
to work as a comfort woman in the first place. In Korea, kidnapping, including recruiting
fraud, was the target of police crackdowns before the War. At that time, there werethousands of labor recruiters in Korea.
3When recruiters took women from Korea to comfort stations, a number of official
documents were needed. Those travelling to China and Southeast Asia were uniformlyrequired to submit a document stating the purpose of the trip and to obtain a “personalreference form” which was issued by the local police chief. Procedures for comfort
women were even stricter.
Papers that were required included “application for business permit as temporary bar
maid,” which was to be jointly filed by the woman and the comfort station owner, twocopies of a self-portrait photo, employment consent form stamped by head of thehousehold and the applicant, stamped certificates of both and a copy of her family register(The employment consent, stamped certificate and a copy of the family register must be
filed in person to be issued). On top of these, staff at Japanese Consulates directly
confirmed if she intended to work at a comfort station of her own volition. (Mr. Ju Ikjong stated the above in YouTube Channel of Syngman Rhee School set up by Professor
Lee Young-hoon, co-author of Anti-Japan Tribalism.)
When a woman arrived at a comfort station involuntarily, this was a problem. The army
unit in charge of usage and administration of the comfort station needed to confirm if shecame to the station with the understanding of the nature of the work in which she wasgoing to engage. The unit was also to confirm the above-mentioned papers. There werecases in which new arrivals were brought to the station through deception and wereimmediately sent home.
Judging from the above, it can be said that cases of human trafficking by parents selling
their daughter, fully aware of the work she was expected to do, far outnumbered cases ofrecruiting comfort women through kidnapping. Newspapers at the time revealed thathuman trafficking of daughters by parents was common practice and became a serious
social problems. In the mid-1920s, a similar situation occurred in Japan. A society inwhich families were so poor that they had no option but to sell their daughters to survive
triggered the 2-26 coup d’etat incident in 1936.
Statement that prostitutes were either volunteers or sold by their parents
As I stated in my previous article, “Contents of an American paper logically explainingthat comfort women were not sex slaves,” the practice of recruiting comfort women fell4

on the boundary between illegal human trafficking on one hand and legal enforcement ofrights and labor recruiting on the other. Human trafficking, called “human meat market”,
was rampant and became a serious social problem. Those arrested on the charge of humantrafficking were mostly found “not guilty”.
Considering the circumstances, parents dealing with recruiters were fully aware where
their daughter was going and what work she was to do. Even though there was no clear
written contract present, the transaction constituted a contract as Westerners generally
refer to, if parents knew all about it. Anti-Ramseyer critics in South Korea and the UnitedStates show their ignorance of the time.
I wrote previously, “The typical case where a contract was concluded between a comfort
woman and the business owner was that the woman had worked as a prostitute within andoutside Korea before the War. Here are statements by Koreans who described the situation
at the time. They were from inquiry records of three Korean prisoners of war captured bythe U.S. Army in 1945. (Composite Report on Three Korean Navy [Imperial JapaneseNavy] Civilians List No. 78, dated 25 March 1945, Re Special Questions on Koreans.)
The questions were: “Do Koreans know that the Army is recruiting Korean women towork as prostitutes for the Imperial Japanese Army? How do ordinary Koreans react tothis? Do you know about any riot or friction caused by it?”
Their answers were: “Prostitutes we saw were all volunteers or sold by their parents. Thisis a Korean way of thinking. If Japanese directly conscripted Korean women, young andold alike would stand up in a fury. Men would get madly angry and would have instantly
killed Japanese whatever would become of themselves later.”
Their answers indicate that “forced abductions” never happened and could never havetaken place. Instead, the general path to become a comfort woman was parents dealing
with a human trafficker, by prostitutes changing jobs or by direct employment. I havenever heard more inclusive statements about the process of becoming a comfort woman.
Comfort women were “sex workers”
Human trafficking by parents and prostitutes who wanted to become comfort women
were the major methods. Comfort women themselves or their parents concluded
5economic contracts with the business owner. Comfort women were not sex slaves, butwere sex workers. Comfort women concluded a contract with a broker or a businessowner to start sex work, just as any worker concludes a labor contract with an employer.
If an actor acts in a fixed pattern, this means that the person acts according to a contract,
and therefore a contract exists. To deny a contractual relationship, it must be demonstrated
that there are no materials present that verify a substantial contract, which Professor
Ramseyer claims constitute a contract, such as receipt of upfront payment, the existenceof a contract period and the rate of dividing revenue between the comfort woman and thecomfort station.
However, criticism against Professor Ramseyer’s article, even partially, has yet to be
substantially documented. I am confident that this is a good opportunity for the Korean
academic circle and those around the world to launch a meaningful discussion on thecomfort women issue.

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