To: Speaker of the United States House of Representatives
President of Harvard University
Editor-in-Chief of the International Review of Law and Economics
Chairman of the National Assembly of Korea

Statement:
Professor John Ramseyer’s Paper is Nothing Less than
Infringement of Human Rights
under the Guise of Academic Freedom

The issue of “comfort women” refers to the sex crime committed
against women by the Japanese military during the Second World War andhas already been recognized as wartime sexual violence, i.e., a sex crime, byinternational institutions such as a commission on human rights of the United
Nations.
It is a fact that the Japanese government and military were involved in
the establishment of brothels and recruitment of comfort women, and the factthat the proprietors were selected secretly by the Japanese government has
been proven from Japanese state documents.
In August of 1993, Yohei Kono, Chief Cabinet Secretary in the Miyazawa
cabinet, released the “Kono Statement” in which he acknowledged andapologized for the participation of Japanese military and authorities in thecomfort women issue.
Many women were forcibly conscripted by the Japanese military or
deceived with job offers into becoming sex slaves of the Japanese military.

These included not only Japanese women but also Korean, Chinese, Taiwanese,
Southeast Asian, and even Dutch and German women.
Nevertheless, Professor Ramseyer has written a paper falsely assertingthat the Japanese government and military were not involved, and that thewomen and brothel owners had signed contracts for their mutual profit. In
this paper, he has made the critically erroneous statement that the Japanesemilitary’s comfort women were all voluntary prostitutes while giving an overly
broad interpretation of the status of the prostitution industry in Japan. It isparticularly noteworthy that these errors may surpass simple academic errors
and may intentionally correspond with the views of certain political forces.
The “prostitution contracts” themselves that Ramseyer mentions did
not exist for comfort women, and all these women were forced or deceived
into their roles and unable to escape. This is a historical truth that can only beconsidered sexual slavery.
Professor Ramseyer’s paper, which ignores these historical facts, goesbeyond the boundaries of academic freedom and contains abundant violationsof the human rights of victims to the point that it should have been deemedunpublishable. We consider it appropriate for the journal containing his paper
to reevaluate it.
The game theory Ramseyer uses to explain the issue of the comfort
women is unsuitable for a discussion of historical facts. Such theory declaringthat both parties signed contracts for mutual benefit cannot be applied to sexcrimes.
This fabrication and distortion of historical facts by Ramseyer and theJapanese far-right and new pro-Japanese forces within Korea who support himmust end now. Furthermore, the Korean National Assembly must quickly revise
the Law Prohibiting Distortion of the Comfort Women Issue. The American

Historical Association should also thoroughly review Ramseyer’s paper.

March 1st, 2021
*A survivor of "comfort women"
LEE OK-Seon*Chairman of the Heritage of Korean Independence
KIM Won-Woong*Lawyers for a Democratic Society (TF members for the issue of ‘Comfort Women’)RYU Kwang-Ok
YANG Sung-Woo*Lawyers of Korean Bar Association (Members of Special Committee on the Rights ofVictims by Japanese Imperialism)
CHOI Bong-Tae, CHUNG Jae-Hoon, HA Young-Ju, JEONG Bong-Su,JOO Sung-Hoon, JUNG Young-Hoon, KIM Ga-Hye, KIM Jung-Hee
LEE Ji-Won, OH Ellim, PARK Dong-Min, PARK Rae-Hyung, RHEE Dong-Joon
ROH Seong-Hyun, SHIN Dong-Wook, SIM Sang-Han*A lawyer of Wilderness Law Firm
YANG Tae-Jung*A lawyer, Chairperson of Solidarity for Wave of Peace)
JEON Su-mi*House of Sharing and the Museum of Military Sexual Slavery by JapanHEO Jeong-A, JEONG Sung-Nam, JO Sung-Hyun, KIM Dae-Wol

KO Ye-Ji, LEE Wo-Kyung, RYU Eun-Kyung, Won Jong-Seon, YAJIMA Tsukasa*Members of the National Assembly of Korea
SONG Young-Gil (The Chairman of the National Assembly's Foreign Affairs and Unifi
cation Committee, a member of Democratic Party of Korea)

YANG Hyang-Ja (Executive Committee member of Democratic Party of Korea)*Professors
Jun Gang-Soo (Daegu Catholic University)
Hosaka Yuji (Sejong University)*Marriotts Ridge High School 10th grade
Rachael LEE