South Korea's prosecution has indicted a university professor, charging that her book defamed former "comfort women" from Korea, who were forced to serve in frontline brothels for Japanese troops before and during World War II. What Park Yu-ha, a professor of Japanese literature at Sejong University in Seoul, tried to do in the book was delve into the complexity of the harsh situation surrounding the women — a situation that resulted from Japan's imperialism, colonial rule of Korea and war-mobilization system. The purpose of the book is anything but exonerating Japan over the comfort women issue. The indictment clearly constitutes government intrusion into freedom of academic research. The prosecutors should rescind the charges against the scholar.
Acting on complaints by surviving comfort women, the Seoul Eastern District Prosecutors Office on Nov. 18 indicted Park without detaining her in connection with her book "Comfort Women of the Empire." The prosecution charged that the author damaged the rights and honor of the women by stating "false facts" and including descriptions that make it appear as if these women had voluntarily engaged in prostitution for the Japanese military.
What the prosecutors cite as erroneous facts includes Park's argument that the comfort women system was within the framework of prostitution and her description that they and Japanese soldiers were in a relationship of camaraderie, with both of them fighting together on the front line. To reinforce its position, the prosecution refers to such documents as the 1993 statement by Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono on the issue and the 2007 resolution by the U.S. House of Representatives, the latter characterizing the comfort women system as "forced military prostitution by the Government of Japan" and mentioning "the Imperial Armed Forces' coercion of young women into sexual slavery, known to the world as 'comfort women.' "