A South Korean professor who challenged the consensus view of Japan’s wartime “comfort women” was yesterday convicted of defaming the victims, after a Seoul appeals court overturned an earlier acquittal.
Park Yu-ha, of Sejong University in the South Korean capital, was found guilty of defamation for questioning the popular narrative that all comfort women were dragged from their homes by Japanese soldiers during World War II.
In her 2013 book The Comfort Women of the Empire Park suggested the reality was more complex, with some women volunteering — although without necessarily knowing what their eventual fate would be.
Many were told that they would get factory jobs, she wrote.
The book also suggested that some women forged emotional bonds with the soldiers they served, sparking an angry response from surviving victims.
The Seoul High Court yesterday overturned a January verdict by a lower court, which acquitted Park on the premise that academic freedom was a basic right and her opinions were not a criminal issue.
“Park used definitive expressions in some parts of her book which could make readers think that ... the victims voluntarily joined military brothels with an intention to sell sex,” the High Court said.
“She inflicted [significant] mental stress on the victims by displaying distorted claims about those forced into sex slavery,” it said.
Historians have said that up to 200,000 women, mostly from the then-Japanese colony of Korea, but also other parts of Asia including Taiwan and China, were forced to become sex slaves for Japanese troops.
The issue remains highly sensitive in both South Korea and China, with Seoul and Tokyo engaged in a diplomatic row over memorial statues to the women installed in front of Japanese missions in the South.
The High Court fined Park 10 million won (US$8,857) — a lighter punishment than a three-year jail term sought by prosecutors.
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