INTERVIEW | Dr Ju Ik-jong on the Comfort Women History and His Challenge to Left-Leaning Scholars

Dr Ju Ik-jong is the author of a new book on the comfort women issue, Anti-Japan Tribalism: The Final Conclusion on the Comfort Women Issue (Bungeishunju, June 12, 2024). Dr Ju was in Tokyo on June 14. Political writer Takao Harakawa caught up with the South Korean economist for an interview for The Sankei Shimbun and JAPAN Forward.

The Anti-Japan Tribalism author argues that stories of "forced" wartime mobilization and "sexual slavery" surrounding comfort women issue are "fictional fabrications." At the same time, Dr Ju emphasizes the need to move past the comfort women issue. "The important thing is not to make it an issue between South Korea and Japan," he states. 

Key excerpts from the interview follow.

Ju Ik-jong on 'Anti-Japan Tribalism'

In your book, you claim that assertions of forced mobilization and sexual slavery by comfort women advocacy groups are "fictional fabrications." Could you elaborate?

The belief that Korean women were taken by the Japanese Imperial Army and made into sexual slaves has proliferated. This has further fostered anti-Japan sentiment in Korea and led to demands for apologies and compensation from Japan. 

However, many poor Korean families at that time often entrusted their daughters to brokers. Those brokers then coerced them into signing contracts for prostitution. It was an unfortunate reality, but comfort women were one part of that broader situation.

Wasn't this widely understood among those familiar with Korea under colonial rule?

Absolutely. During the more than 13 years of talks on Japan-Korea normalization, the comfort women issue was never framed as a consequence of colonial rule. Instead, it was viewed as a sorrowful tale of women from impoverished backgrounds. There was no discourse at the time about it being a sin of Japanese colonialism or a policy error. 

This issue only gained prominence in the 1990s, after many who had lived through the colonial era had passed away.

You also pointed out that Japanese researchers and activists supported South Korean comfort women advocates.

​​Indeed. Japanese left-wing scholars, including Yoshimi Yoshiaki (Professor Emeritus at Chuo University), were the ones who actually created it. They presented the perspective of comfort women as forcibly mobilized sex slaves. That view subsequently gained widespread acceptance. 

I examined the same sources they used and arrived at a different conclusion. If they were responsible researchers, they should respond sincerely to my findings.

More About the Author

Ju Ik-jong is also a co-author of the book, Anti-Japan Tribalism, The Root of the Japan-Korea Crisis (Miraisha and Bungeishunju), published in 2019. He earned his PhD from Seoul National University on the subject of Korean economic history under Japanese colonial rule. Furthermore, Ju was a visiting scholar at Harvard University. He has also headed the curatorial research department of the National Museum of Korean Contemporary History. A well-published author, Dr Ju is also a director at the Syngman Rhee School. 

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• BOOK REVIEW | ‘Anti-Japan Tribalism: The Root of the Japan-Korea Crisis’ by Lee Young-hoon and others
  
  

(Read the interview article in Japanese.)

Author: Takao Harakawa, The Sankei Shimbun