SDHF Newsletter No. 407 Book Review Harvard Professor Tells Us the Truth about the Comfort Women Issue

＜Book Review＞
Harvard Professor Tells Us the Truth about the Comfort Women Issue (Subtitle: Contracting for Sex in the Pacific War), written by John Mark Ramseyer, translated by Lee Woo-youn and Lew Seok-choon, published by Media Watch Company
The significance of the concurrent publications of Professor Ramseyer’s papers in Japan and South Korea
By Matsuki Kunitoshi, Fellow, International Research Institute of Controversial Histories
June 11, 2024

The book titled Harvard Professor Ramseyer’s Complete Refutation of Comfort Women Being Sexual Slaves published by Heart Publishers, Seoul in 2013, contains the professor’s papers that completely refuted the theory of comfort women being sexual slaves. It was published on December 13, 2023, in Japan and the publication of the same book translated into the Korean language followed on January 3, 2024. The title of the Korean version of the book is Harvard Professor Tells Us the Truth about the Comfort Women Issue with the subtitle Contracting for Sex in the Pacific War.
The structure and contents of the book are nearly identical to Japanese version and the only difference is that in the last chapter of the Korean version, a paper entitled “Connection with North Korea”, co-authored by Professor Ramseyer and the former Waseda University Professor Arima Tetsuo is added.
The translation into the Korean language of Prof. Ramseyer’s papers was done by Mr. Lee woo-youn, researcher at Naksungdae Institute of Economic Research and Mr. Lew Seok-choon of Yonsei University. Mr. Lee woo-youn is one of the authors of the book Anti-Japanese Ethnicism published in Korea in 2019 and as an economist, he objectively analyzes the development stages of the Korean economy and highly praises the governance by Japan. From December 2019 onward, he has been single-handedly conducting regular demonstrations asking for “the removal of the comfort woman statue, the suspension of the anti-Japan Wednesday meeting and the dissolution of the Korean Council for Justice and Remembrance (The Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan). He is truly a man of action.
The other translator, Mr. Lew Seok-choon, is a sociology doctor. He studies the period of Japan’s rule of the Korean Peninsula from the perspective of “developmental sociology” while maintaining a balanced and impartial viewpoint. During his lecture at Yonsei University, he talked about the “truth about the Japanese rule,” and as a result, he was expelled from his teaching job, indicted by the anti-Japan forces and is now fighting his case in the court.
The successful publication at this time of The Truth about the Comfort Women Issue owes much to both translators for their passion and sense of duty. The significance of what Ramseyer papers say in refutation of the comfort women-related lies being known to the general Korean public is enormous. The publication of this book will be epoch-making and a significant step toward the complete resolution of the comfort women issue.
*This book review was first published in International Research Institute of Controversial Histories site (https://i-rich.org/).
URL: https://www.sdh-fact.com/review-article/2203/
PDF: https://www.sdh-fact.com/CL/RamseyerjkE.pdf
MOTEKI Hiromichi, Chairman
Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact