Japanese, U.S. scholars attack Seoul's indictment of professor over 'comfort women' book
November 27, 2015
November 27, 2015
By RYUICHI KITANO/ Senior Staff Writer
A group of 54 scholars, writers and journalists from Japan and the United States have protested the indictment of a South Korean university professor for her book about “comfort women.”
The indictment of Park Yu-ha for defamation “gradually violates the freedom of speech and the press as well as academic and artistic freedom,” the group said in a statement read out at a news conference in Tokyo on Nov. 26.
Park, a professor at Seoul’s Sejong University, was charged on Nov. 18 over her book “Comfort Women of the Empire.” South Korean prosecutors said the book defamed the women who were forced to provide sex to Japanese soldiers during World War II.
“Public authority in the form of the prosecutors office has moved to confine academic freedom and freedom of speech based on a particular view of history,” the protest statement said.
Chizuko Ueno, professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Tokyo who was one of the signers of the statement, said at the new conference: “I hold a sense of discomfort about a book being judged in a courtroom. A fundamental point of freedom of speech is active discussions. Authority should not repress it.”
Among those from the group attending the news conference were Yoichi Komori, a professor of Japanese literature at the University of Tokyo, Kei Nakazawa, a writer and professor of literature at Tokyo’s Hosei University, and Yoshibumi Wakamiya, former editor in chief of The Asahi Shimbun.
Others who signed the statement were Yohei Kono, who as chief Cabinet secretary in 1993 issued a statement offering an apology to former comfort women, and Tomiichi Murayama, who as prime minister in 1995 issued a statement on the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II in which he expressed “deep remorse and a heartfelt apology” for the damage caused to Asian nations.
“What to certify as facts and how to interpret history are issues left up to academic freedom,” the statement said. “Matters related to speech should be countered through speech, and public authority should never encroach into that arena.”
The statement also called for “a ruling by the court that would not be embarrassing to the common sense and conscience of democracy.”
Tadashi Kimiya, a professor of Korean Peninsula studies at the University of Tokyo and a signatory to the statement, referred to Seoul’s attempt to return certification of history textbooks back to a government-based system.
“(The indictment) must be called another move on the part of the state authority to monopolize historical interpretation,” Kimiya said. “It could lead to giving the international community the excuse to ask ‘Is South Korea a democratic nation?’”
