11-5-17
South Korean Professor Fined for Book About “Comfort Women,” Proving the Truth Is Still Dangerous
Historians in the Newstags: comfort women, South Korea
A Seoul appeal court has slapped a heavy fine on an academic for publishing politically incorrect research, suggesting that despite the success of the candlelight protests that removed Park Geun-hye from the presidency, South Korea still has a long way to go when it comes to free speech and democracy.
On October 27, the Seoul High Court overturned the acquittal of Park Yu-ha, a Sejong University professor and expert in Japanese-Korean relations, fining her US$8,846 for defaming victims of Japanese wartime sexual slavery, known as “comfort women”, with her 2013 book Comfort Women of the Empire.
The book uses the women’s testimonies and historical documents, noting some were prostitutes rather than slaves, some soldiers helped those who were slaves escape and some Koreans worked as “dealers” who made the system possible.
After Park’s indictment for defamation in November 2015, 54 scholars – including MIT professor Noam Chomsky and University of Chicago professor and Korean history expert Bruce Cumings – issued statements in her defence.
But the factual accuracy of the book was irrelevant because in South Korea, a statement does not have to be false to constitute defamation – it merely has to be considered damaging. ...
comments powered by Disqus
News
- Chair of Florida Charter School Board on Firing of Principal: About Policy, Not David Statue
- Graduate Student Strikes Fight Back Against Decades of Austerity, Seek to Revive Opportunity
- When Right Wingers Struggle with Defining "Woke" it Shows they Oppose Pursuing Equality
- Strangelove on the Square: Secret USAF Films Showed Airmen What to Expect if Nuclear War Broke Out
- The Women of the Montgomery Bus Boycott
- New Books Force Consideration of Reconstruction's End from Black Perspective
- Excerpt: How Apartheid South Africa Tried to Create a Libertarian Utopia
- Historian's Book on 1970s NBA Shows Racial Politics around Basketball Have Always Been Ugly
- Kendi: "Anti-woke" Part of Backlash Against Antiracist Protest Movements
- Monica Muñoz Martinez Honored for Truth-Telling in Texas History