Author of ‘Comfort Women of the Empire’ indicted in South Korea
November 20, 2015

By YOSHIHIRO MAKINO/ Correspondent
SEOUL–Prosecutors here indicted a South Korean university professor on defamation charges, saying she falsely described former “comfort women” who provided sex to Japanese soldiers during World War II.

Park Yu-ha, a professor at Sejong University, was charged without arrest on Nov. 18 in connection to her book, “Comfort Women of the Empire.”

The Seoul Eastern District Prosecutors Office concluded that Park, through the book, defamed the honor of former comfort women and deviated from academic freedom.

“It is extremely regrettable that my ideas were not accepted,” Park said on Nov. 19. “But the indictment has become an opportunity for my assertions to be known widely.”

In the book, Park wrote that she sees the relationship between the “empire” (Japan) and the “colony” (Korean Peninsula) as the backdrop for the Korean comfort women issue.

She explained that as the war progressed, Korean women who were poor and lacked protection of their rights were sent to battlefronts as comfort women for Japanese troops.

In the book, Park raised the issue of whether the women were “sex slaves” or “prostitutes.”

Based on testimonies of former comfort women and other people, Park said the actual conditions and circumstances surrounding the women were diverse.

But the prosecutors office takes the stance that the Korean women were forcibly mobilized by the Japanese government and its military forces, making the victims the equivalent of “sex slaves.”

The office cited the statement of apology to former comfort women issued in 1993 by then Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono and a United Nations report.

Prosecutors took issue with what they described as “false facts” in Park’s book.

One is her description saying comfort women were within the framework of “prostitution” and comforted Japanese soldiers with “patriotism.” The other is a passage saying that, officially, the comfort women were not forcibly taken away by Japanese forces, at least on the Korean Peninsula.

“Comfort Women of the Empire” was published in summer 2013.

After former comfort women sought a temporary injunction against publication of the book, the Seoul Eastern District Court in February 2015 ruled that it could not permit publication of the book unless some parts were deleted.

A modified version was later published.

Former comfort women also filed a criminal complaint against Park in June 2014, saying she had defamed them.

The Japanese version of the book was published in November 2014 by Asahi Shimbun Publications Inc.

The Japanese version and the Korean version both aim to deepen understanding between the peoples of Japan and South Korea through a re-examination of the comfort women issue.

However, Park, who studied in Japan, wrote the Japanese version herself, and the structures and expressions used in the Japanese version are different from those in the Korean version.

http://megalodon.jp/2015-1122-0825-57/www.peeep.us/59885620
https://web.archive.org/web/20151121232608/http://www.peeep.us/59885620