Face up to history

Scholars have no right to deny wartime atrocities

South Koreans are shocked again by another right-wing scholar's attempts to distort historical facts about atrocities committed by the Japanese military during World War II. During a lecture Sept. 19, sociology professor Lew Seokchoon of Yonsei University described Korean victims of wartime sex slavery for Japanese troops as a "kind of prostitutes." He argued the Japanese authorities did not directly force them into military brothels.

Lew believes those victims were equal to modern-day prostitutes who sell sex to make money. He went so far as to say, "They lived the life of a hostess and that's how they started. It's pretty much the same … if you are curious, you can try." How can a professor make such remarks to students? We cannot help but call into question Lew's qualifications as a professor.

All of his remarks are nonsense. They defy firmly established historical facts that the Japanese government was deeply involved in coercing Asian women, mostly Koreans, into sex slavery for Japanese soldiers during the war. In 1993, then Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono issued the so-called Kono Statement to acknowledge the forceful mobilization of "comfort woman," a euphemism for wartime sex slaves.

We can hardly understand why Lew tried to deny the widely accepted international perception that Japan committed the brutal act of sex slavery. It is baloney for him to argue that the testimonies by sex slavery victims were all lies. Lew even denounced the Korean Council for Justice and Remembrance of the Issues of Military Sexual Slavery by Japan as a North Korea-aligned group.

We Koreans enjoy freedom of speech, freedom of thought and academic freedom. But Lew has seemingly abused these constitutional freedoms to distort history and gloss over the brutal atrocities committed by Japan during its 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula. He should not dare to justify his revisionist views in the name of academic freedom. He should realize that his ludicrous remarks and misguided historical awareness have opened old wounds for the sex slavery victims.

Lew's episode came after a controversy erupted recently over a book, titled "Anti-Japan Tribalism," co-written by former Seoul National University economics professor Rhee Younghoon and other right-wing scholars. In the book, the authors denied Japan's forceful mobilization of sex slaves and its conscription of Koreans for forced labor during WWII.

They belong to the Naksungdae Institute of Economic Research which promotes revisionist historical views that Japan's colonial rule of Korea contributed to the modernization of the peninsula. It is shameful to see scholars, who are at the forefront of the "new right" movement, acting as a mouthpiece of right-wing Japanese scholars and politicians.

No one can deny that Japan's wartime sex slavery and forced labor were crimes against humanity. There is no legitimate reason for scholars ― liberal or conservative ― to deny or whitewash Japans' past misdeeds and wrongdoings. There is no future for both victims and perpetrators if they forget or distort history. Let's face up squarely to history to prevent it from repeating itself.