South Korean academic denies defaming ‘comfort women’ in book
PUBLISHED : Wednesday, 02 December, 2015, 8:48pm
UPDATED : Wednesday, 02 December, 2015, 8:48pm
Agence France-Presse in Seoul
Park Yu-ha, a literature professor at South Korea’s Sejong University. Photo: AFP
A South Korean academic facing trial on charges of defaming wartime sex slaves – or “comfort women” – in a recent book, accused prosecutors on Wednesday of distorting her work.
Park Yu-ha, a professor at Seoul’s Sejong University, was formally charged last month after a group of South Korean comfort women asked prosecutors to launch an investigation.
Mainstream historians say up to 200,000 women, mostly from Korea but also from China, Indonesia and other Asian nations, were forced into sexual slavery in Japanese military brothels during the second world war.
In The Comfort Women of the Empire published in 2013, Park challenged the established narrative – regularly cited by the South Korean media – that all the comfort women were dragged from their homes by Japanese soldiers.
Park suggested the reality was more complex, with some of the women volunteering – without necessarily knowing what their eventual fate would be.
The book said much of the blame lay with the entire “patriarchal social system” in both Japan and South Korea that exploited poor, uneducated women.
It also suggested some women forged an emotional bond with the soldiers they served.
The book made headlines last June when a group of 11 surviving comfort women filed a complaint with the public prosecution service.
“The book was not intended to criticise or defame any comfort women ... and it did not harm the public interest as claimed,” Park told reporters at a press conference.
She argued that passages from her book had been taken out of context to build the case against her, and insisted that her only motive had been to encourage public debate.
The fate of the comfort women is a hugely emotional issue in South Korea and a source of much of the bitterness and distrust that has marred relations between Seoul and Tokyo for decades.
The defamation case triggered a public backlash against Park, but her supporters argue she was misrepresented and have criticised what they say is an attack on free speech.
“The judicial system is trying to put public discourse over comfort women under its control,” a group of 190 academics, journalists and artists said in a statement released on Wednesday.
“It is deeply anachronistic to try to make academic arguments a subject of judicial judgement and to try to judge whether they are correct or not,” the statement said.
