Department of Communication Studies
Mike Curb College of Arts, Media,
and Communication

2/19/2021
To the editors of the International Review of Law and Economics:
I am writing to express extreme concern regarding the decision by the International Review of
Law and Economics to publish J. Mark Ramseyer’s article, “Contracting for Sex in the PacificWar,” in which he argues that Korean Comfort Women were prostitutes who collaborated with
comfort station operators to create favorable “indenture contracts”1 that would entice them towant to go to the warfront and “work hard.”2 This article is objectionable on every level, startingwith the premise and including his faulty interpretation of the primary sources. There is no legal
contract that protects perpetrators of sexual slavery and sex trafficking. No contracts have everbeen found where Comfort Women agreed to indentured servitude. Comfort Women is aneuphemism for an estimated 200,000 sexually enslaved girls and women taken by the Japanesemilitary from nations colonized and occupied by Japan during the WWII era. They sufferedatrocious violence in an institutionalized and coordinated sex trafficking and forced sexual laborsystem that imprisoned them and where they were subject to frequent sexual violence and abuse.
In 1991, Korean survivor Kim Hak-Sun halmoni testified to her experience as a Comfort Woman
to the Japanese public. This opened space for other women enslaved across Japanese occupied
territories including China, the Philippines, Indonesia, East Timor, Malaysia, Burma, Taiwan,
and Dutch territories to testify. Survivors describe how they still suffer from physical andemotional pain and trauma. Their testimony prompted the 1993 Kono Declaration, ignited
activism around Japanese military slavery, and prompted new research and scholarship that has
supported global mobilization against gender-based violence.
In a relatively short period of time, a group of concerned scholars came together to criticallyscrutinize Ramseyer’s sources and assertions, definitively rebutting the article’s argument that
the Comfort Women were willing prostitutes, not coerced sex slaves.3 Particularly unethical, healso misuses the autobiography of a survivor Mun Okju to make a key point that Comfort
Women profited from sexual slavery. Given the serious limitations of Ramseyer’s scholarship it
is unfathomable how this article could have passed the journal’s review process.
As a scholar of the Korean Comfort Woman history and activism, I am additionally alarmed by
how Ramseyer’s article contributes to the growing transpacific right wing alliance centeredaround denying Comfort Women history. Ramseyer’s building of his argument around consent,
perfectly aligns with right-wing Japanese revisionists, legitimated by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe
and members of the Liberal Democratic Party, who for decades have been fixating on theconcept that Comfort Women were agents free from coercion.4 Their argument is in service ofrefusing Comfort Women demand for an official apology from the Japanese Diet. The attempts
to delegitimize the claims of Comfort Women have escalated in Japan over the past 30 years,
including the removal of mention of Comfort Women from Japanese history books.5

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A transpacific lens must be added to this denialist mobilization: the rise in activism andscholarship around Comfort Women history in the US, represented by the building of Comfort
Women memorials across the US since 2010, and passing of House Resolution 121 Supporting
Redress for Former Comfort Women in 2007 has emboldened the Japanese right-wing evenfurther and given them a renewed energy and new platform for growing their movement.6
Scholar Tomomi Yamaguchi notes the Japanese right wing mobilization to remove a Comfort
Women memorial that was built in 2010 in Palisades, NJ as the start of the “so-called ‘history
wars’” now explicitly expanded to include the US. 7 In 2014 concerned scholars across the US
came together, in response to Japan Foreign Ministry, acting with support of the Prime Minister
Abe, instructing ”its New York Consulate General to ask McGraw-Hill publishers to correct the
depiction of the comfort women in its world history textbook Traditions and Encounters: A
Global Perspective on the Past, coauthored by historians Herbert Ziegler and Jerry Bentley.”8Given how much has been written about coercion and consent with regard to Comfort Women
history, it is hard to believe that Ramseyer is unaware of this debate.
Like the US alt-right, the most virulent of the Comfort Women deniers have relied on distorting
the past and making up lies, with casting doubt on the testimony of Comfort Women being oneof the most popular strategy. Korean survivor Mun Okju (also Mun Okchu) and her testimony isoften targeted for such abuse. According to her own account, Mun Okju was born in 1924 in
Daegu.9 In 1940 she was abducted and became a sexual slave for Japanese soldiers in Manchuria
where she was regularly raped over 30 times a day.10 She was able to escape to Seoul, but Mun
Okju was captured again and sent to Southeast Asia. Her story is well known to Comfort Woman
scholars, and her testimony is translated to English in True Stories of the Korean Comfort
Women: Testimonies Compiled by the Korean Council for Women Drafted for Military Sexual
Slavery by Japan and the Research Association on the Women Drafted for Military Sexual
Slavery by Japan.11 Her life story is documented in a book dedicated to her life, first published inJapanese as Biruma sensen tateshidan no “ianfu” datta watashi12 and then in Korean as Mun
Okju halmeoni ildaegi.13 Her narrative has been an important part of analysis around the Comfort
Women history, featured in monographs by Joshua D. Pilzer, Anh Yonson, C. Sarah Soh, andGeorge Hicks, as well as several articles.14
Instead of her own memoir or True Stories Ramseyer cites a pro Japanese neo-nationalist
website, where the moderator has picked out 12 quotes detailing only Mun Okju’s time in Burma
and Vietnam near the end of her period in the Comfort Woman system.15 The website features
numerous other articles denying Comfort Women history, Comfort Women testimonies, theRape of Nanking and others. Feminist theorists, advocates for victims of gender-based violence,and human rights jurists argue that giving testimony and having their stories heard is a primarystep in restoring dignity and can lead to healing for victims of gender based violence.16
Testimonies are the bedrock of victim-centered justice models. Oral histories are historicalsources that foreground the importance of a reparative approach to history and address the gaps
inherent in imperial archives.17 However, Comfort Women testimony and accounts from oral
history have consistently come under attack from deniers who question the validity of memories
as historical sources. Through such denials, the experiences of the victims are discredited andtheir dignity impugned.18
These 12 passages are decontextualized and are cut out from the broader narrative web of herlife. These passages focus on her feelings of gratitude, her mobility, her accumulation of wealth,and sense of joy at being a comfort woman. They are specifically selected to make an argument

that she enjoyed her life as a Comfort Woman. Scholars such as Pilzer, Soh, and Hicks in theirincorporation of her autobiography into their scholarship present her whole life story. They do
not need to gloss over the fact that she may have earned tips (she was made to entertain Japanesesoldiers) nor deny that her experience has elements that demonstrate the complexity of theJapanese comfort system across the war front. An apt corollary might be to liken the variegatedexperiences of Comfort Women with that of African slaves in the US in the antebellum era. Mun
Okju’s life points to how these larger systems of state violence were negotiated and mediated incomplex ways by the various subjects who were part of the system. In his turn to Mun Okju’s
story, Ramseyer abuses her life and experience for his own gain.
The accepted term used to describe the experiences of these women and girls is sexual slavery.
The testimony of the Comfort Women, along with a broad and deep historical archive, including
those of the Japanese Self Defense Agency, and US military reports, substantiate that thevictimization of these young women was organized by the Japanese imperial army.19
The first time the term was introduced to describe the Comfort Woman history at the UN was in1992 when Sin Heisoo spoke on behalf of the Korean Council and categorized the “comfort
system” as sexual slavery.20 In 1993, Theo Van Boven, Special Rapporteur of the SubCommission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities would amplify thisterm, using the expression “sexual slaves” concerning the Comfort Women system.21 In 1996
Radhika Coomaraswamy, the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, challenged
Japan’s objection to the term military sexual slavery, concluding that “ the practice of ‘comfort
women’ should be considered a clear case of sexual slavery and a slavery-like practice.”22 In
conjunction with the testimony of the victims of sexual slavery from the International Tribunal
for the former Yugoslavia and International Tribunal for Rwanda, the testimony of the Comfort
Women from the 2000 Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal on Japan’s Military Sexual
Slavery have been central to creating global accountability and forcing states to accept full legal
and moral responsibility for sexual violence against women. Ramseyer offers absolutely noevidence that would over turn this overwhelming consensus that has built up over the past 30
years.
That Ramseyer did not consult any scholarship in the field, such as the works of C. Sarah Soh,Pei Pei Qui, Yuki Tanaka, Bonnie Oh, Puja Kim, Laura Hyun Yi Kang, and Yoshimi Yoshiaki’s
works should have easily flagged the problematic nature of this work. The International Review
of Law and Economics should withdraw his article immediately.
Yours truly,
Jinah Kim
Associate Professor in Communication Studies
Faculty Affiliate in Asian Studies
California State University, Northridge
Author of Postcolonial Grief: The Afterlives of the Pacific Wars in the Americas, Duke
University Press, 20191

P. 7, “Contracting for sex in the Pacific War.”
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2

Ibid, P.7
See Amy Stanley, Hannah Shepherd, Sakaya Chatani, David Ambaras, Chelsea Szendi
Schiedler, “Contracting for Sex In the Pacific War”: The Case for Retraction on Ground of
Academic Misconduct,” https://sites.google.com/view/concernedhistorians/home, accessed
February 19, 2021. This situation is fast unfolding and there are other scholars also writing
rebuttals and demanding that the journal pull the article.	
  4In March 2007 Shinzo Abe stated when addressing the Japanese Diet that there is no evidence
to prove that Comfort Women were coerced. In April 2015 at a lecture at Harvard Kennedy
School he denied that the Japanese military coordinated the sexual slavery system, stating that
“comfort women were victims of human trafficking conducted by private recruiters.” For moreon Shinzo Abe’s history of denial read p.46 in Tomomi Yamaguchi, “Japan’s Right Wing
Women and the ‘Comfort Women’ Issue,” Georgetown Journal of Asian Affairs. Volume 6,
2020: 45-54. This article also offers a useful history of the arc of government denial: Yoshiaki
Yoshimi, “Government must admit 'comfort women' system was sexual slavery,” Asahi
Shimbun: Asia and Japan Watch, September 20, 2013.
5
Yoshiko Nozaki, "Feminism, Nationalism, and the Japanese Textbook Controversy over'Comfort Women,'" in France Winddance Twine and Kathleen M. Blee, eds., Feminism &Antiracism: International Struggles for Justice (NY: New York University Press, 2001), pp. 170189
6
Michael Honda and Kinue Tokudome, “The Japanese Apology on the “Comfort Women”
Cannot be Considered Official: Interview with Congressman Michael Honda,” The Asia-Pacific
Journal. May 2 2007, Volume 5, Issue 5,
3

7

Tomomi Yamaguchi, “Japan’s Right Wing Women and the ‘Comfort Women’ Issue,”Georgetown Journal of Asian Affairs. Volume 6, 2020: 45-54
8https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/march2015/letter-to-the-editor-standing-with-historians-of-japan
9
P. 104, Keith Howard, ed. Trans. Young Joo Lee. True Stories of the Korean Comfort Women:
Testimonies Compiled by the Korean Council for Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by
Japan and the Research Association on the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan(London: Cassell) 1995: 104-114.
10
P. 106, ibid.
11
Ibid.
12
Mun Okuju with Morikawa Michiko. Biruma sensen tateshidan no “ianfu” datta watashi.
(Tokyo: Nashinokisha) 1996.
13
Mun Okju with Morikawa Michiko. Beoma jeonseon ilbongun “wianbu”: Mun Okju halmoni
ildaegi (Seoul: Areumdaun saramdeul) 2005.
14
Joshua D. Pilzer, Hearts of Pine: Songs in the Lives of Three Korean Survivors of theJapanese "Comfort Women," (New York: Oxford University Press) 2011; Anh Yonson, Whose
Comfort? Body Sexuality, and Identity of Korean ‘Comfort Women’ and Japanese Soldiersduring WWII (World Scientific Publishin) 2020; C. Sarah Soh. The Comfort Women: Sexual
Violence and Postcolonial Memory in Korea and Japan (Chicago: U Chicago) 2008; George
Hicks. The Comfort Women: Sex Slaves of the Japanese Imperial Forces (Allen and Unwin)
1995.
15
Ramseyer’s quote of Mun Okju’s narrative is on p.6 of his article. The cite for his source is
KIH, Apr. 20, 2016, 2016b. Korea Institute of History. 2016 Former Korean Comfort Woman
Mun Oku-chu, which is at website: http://scholarsinenglish.blogspot.com/2014/10/formerkorean-comfort-woman-mun-oku.html, accessed February 11, 2021. The organizing impulse forthe blog is to collect articles that deny Comfort Women history and document pro-Japaneseimperial sentiment by Koreans. Other blog titles on April 2016 include “’Confronting Korea’s
Censored Discourse on Comfort Women’ by Professor Joseph Yi” and “’Korean Wartime Sex
Slaves is Fake News” by Professor Ikuhiko Hata.”
16
Elizabeth Son, Embodied Reckonings:“Comfort Women,” Performance, and Transpacific
Redress (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press) 2018: P.14.

17

For example consider how Comfort Women’s experiences have been completely erased or
occluded from the Treaty of San Francisco (1951) or the ROK-Japanese Normalization Treaty of
1965, even though the US military and Allied forces had explicit knowledge that the Comfort
Women system existed.
18
For more in this debate see Yoshiko Nozaki, “The “Comfort Women” Controversy: History
and Testimony” in The Asia-Pacific Journal, July 6, 2005, Vol 3, Issue 7. Also see, Yoshiaki
Yoshimi, “Government must admit 'comfort women' system was sexual slavery,” Asahi
Shimbun: Asia and Japan Watch, September 20, 2013. Mun Okju’s autobiography has regularly
been cited partially by those seek to discredit Comfort Women’s claim of sexual slavery, with
deniers pointing to these same passages in the KIH website. Another section of her
autobiography which gets a great deal of attention is a section where she narrates her experience
being put on trial for killing a Japanese soldier. See this website as an example of the latter:
http://harc.tokyo/en/?p=76, accessed February 13, 2021.
19

See Yoshimi Yoshiaki. Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery in the Japanese Military during
World War II. Trans. S. O’Brien (NY: Columbia University Press) 2000. Also see United States
Office of War Information, Psychological Warfare Team Attached to US Army Forces India
Burma Theatre, “Japanese Prisoner of War Interrogation Report No. 49”, APO 689. This report
was produced by the Office of War Information of the U.S. Army forces in CBI (China-BurmaIndia) Theatre and based on the interview conducted by a US soldier with 20 Comfort Womenand two Japanese Comfort Station operators. The report confirms that the Japanese military
operated the Comfort System, including the discovery that “the conditions under which theytransacted business were regulated by the Army.”
20
P.8, Laura Hyun Yi Kang. Traffic in Asian Women. (Durham, NC: Duke University Press)
2020.
21
p.130, Christine Levy, trans. Anne Epstein. “The Women’s International War Crimes
Tribunal, Tokyo 2000: a feminist response to revisionism?” in Clio: Women, Gender, History
Journal, 2014, Issue 39: 125-145.
22
P. 13, quoted in Laura Hyun Yi Kang, Traffic in Asian Women. Original quote comes from
Radhika Coomaraswamy, Report on the Mission to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,
the Republic of Korea and Japan on the Issue of Military Sexual Slavery in Wartime. Reportsubmitted to the 52nd session of the UN Commission on Human Rights (E/CN.4/1996/53/Add.1)(New York: UN Economic and Social Council, Commission on Human Rights, Economic andSocial Council, January 4, 1996), P.4.

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