On the 27th, the Japanese government decided on the 2021 edition of the'Diplomatic Office', a white paper that summarizes and publishes a kind of white paper that summarizes the world's diplomatic trends, domestic diplomatic achievements, and tasks every year. In this year's diplomatic office on SBS 8 News, we also delivered a part related to Korea in this year's diplomatic office (▶Go to the article). It was disappointing that I didn't get away from it.



On the 27th, there was another scene confirming the Japanese government's regression in relations between Korea and Japan. The conservative Sankei Shimbun reported on the 2nd page of the 28th as if it was ``natural,'' but the Japanese government has decided on a ``response'' that the word ``military'' is inappropriate in the expression ``comfort women''.



Since there was someone's'question', the government would have decided on the'answer'. The inquiries were thrown at the government by Nobuyuki Baba, a member of the conservative Japanese Restoration Association (Osaka 17th constituency, 3rd election). The question was asked whether the word'military' in'comfort women' and the word'forced conscription' of forced mobilization workers were appropriate, and the government's opinions were summarized as answers to this question.



The key contents of the answer decided by the Japanese government are as follows. In a 1993 Kono discourse that acknowledged the compulsory mobilization of comfort women, the use of the expression "so-called military comfort women" was explained that "the expression was widely used in society at the time," and "the use of the word'communion' is a misconception." It is appropriate to simply use the term'comfort women' because there is a concern of calling them." It is a desperate attempt to remove the Japanese imperial power from the image of the comfort women, symbolized by the military. If you don't use the word ‘servant’, you may be tempted that someday the forced mobilization of comfort women will be blurred.



As you may have noticed in various reports, attempts to reveal “force” from comfort women in the Japanese military are constantly being repeated by the Japanese far-right conservatives. In recent years, a ridiculous thesis by Professor Ramsayer of Harvard University, who wrote the logic of the far right in Japan, would be representative. An academic conference hosted by the International Research Institute for History of History, held last Saturday (24th) in Tokyo, is also part of this attempt. SBS was the only Korean media outlet to put an academic conference on the screen and deliver it to the 8th news on the same day. (▶ go to the article right away) 



The academic conference held at the Seiryo Kaikan in Nagata-cho, Tokyo, where the Japanese Parliament House is located, attracted enough people to fill the auditorium of 200 people.

At the reception desk, we did not receive the participation fee for those of us who revealed that they were Korean reporters and submitted their business cards, but general participants received 2,000 yen (approximately 21,000 won) in the name of material fees.

As soon as I entered the auditorium, my attention was drawn to the podium, and Professor Ramsey's photo was developed and placed on a cradle, and on top of it, the Japanese flag and flags were hung up to the national flag and stars.

It seemed that the flags of the three countries, Korea, the United States, Japan, and Korea were hung to emphasize the idea that the conference was to examine the'international debate' surrounding Professor Ramsey's thesis.

However, only the Taegeukgi was hung upside down.

It wasn't clear whether it was on purpose, but the organizers were moving the podium and checking the microphones as if they were going to start an academic conference.




However, just before 2pm, when the event was scheduled to start, a participant sitting in the front seat was seen pointing at the organizer at the Taegeukgi and saying something.

The organizers were busy talking to each other for a while and then contacting the control room.

After a while, the facility where the flag was hung was lowered, and after removing the Korean flag, I walked again, making the top and bottom normal.

It was an incident that could be seen as a simple mistake, but if the organizers deliberately hung only the Taegeukgi upside down, it would have been a really insidious behavior.




The conference was held in such a way that the contents of Ramsayer's thesis were proudly reported to the attendees by officials from Nadesico Japan, a far-right women's civic group, followed by a far-right historian who raised the objection against Ramsay's thesis again.

There was no criticism of the'scholar vomiting on such a great paper', but the culmination of the conference was a video message sent by Professor Ramsey himself to the organizer.




The main content of Professor Ramsey's 10-minute video message is the same as I delivered in 8 News.

Professor Ramsey defined his accusations as'assassination attempts by opposing scholars', and analyzed that their background was a kind of'combination pressure' that they were reluctant to have'different voices' about comfort women in Anglo-American society. .

He attacked that he was trying to preserve the'consistency' of the comfort women's logic by pressing the other voice-over person-that is, Ramsay himself-to cancel the thesis.

Professor Ramsey's tone was more of a mocking rather than a resentful criticism, and intermittently laughed out among the attendees with a mixture of jokes and complainings.

Most of all, Professor Ramsey, who spent more than 10 years in Japan as a child, had a considerable Japanese proficiency, which made me feel that he was very likable to the attendees of the academic conference.

This is the first time I saw Professor Ramsay speaking in Japanese. From a far right in Japan, a professor at Harvard University, who speaks Japanese so well, wrote a dissertation denying the coercion of comfort women and received saturation from other scholars. It would have felt like a'projection'.



Far-right scholars at the academic conference raised their voices saying, "We will not avoid debates with opposition-that is, scholars who acknowledge the coercion of mobilizing comfort women and ask Japan to apologize and reflect." Whether it's the National Assembly or the press, they set up a forum for formal debate that both sides admitted and insisted that we debate there. However, 30 years have already passed since the ugly facts of the comfort women of the Japanese military were known. It is not possible to glorify it as a legitimate argument to add horses to horses and screaming,'Isn't there evidence?' They know that what they need now is not debate, but follow-up, including acknowledgment and apology of historical facts, but they keep pretending not to know.