CKS stands against the waves of anti-Asian hatred and violence in the US, Canada, and Europe and the ideologies of white supremacy that have allowed for their recurrence over history and their contemporary intensification. We express grief for the senseless murders of Soon Chung Park, Sun Cha Kim, Yong Ae Yue, Hyun Jung Grant, Xiaojie Tan, Dao You Feng, Delaina Ashley Yaun, and Paul Andre Michels. We recognize that these murders are a reflection of longstanding misogyny toward Asian women embedded in Cold War power structures and histories of colonial occupation. Various members of the Korean Studies, Asian Studies, and Asian American communities have made statements, provided resources, or held events, some of which we link here in support:
George Washington University
Carolina Asia Center
Department of Asian Studies, University of British Columbia
Korean American Communication Association
Not Even Past: Statements, Resources, and Events on the Atlanta Shooting
“Addressing anti-Asian Racism in the University,” by Hae Yeon Choo and Robert Diaz
“Anti-Asian Racism and Intersectional Violence,” videoed event at University of Toronto
CKS expresses its solidarity and empathy to all of the scholars and students working and studying under the strain and violence of daily anti-Asian racism. Through Covid-19-related anti-Asian racism, the stress and illnesses of the pandemic have been compounded by the physical and emotional injury of experiencing acts of violence and microaggression, and also witnessing directly or through media the more than 3,800 reported hate-related incidents in the US alone in the last year. We share in the anger and frustration toward the seeming intractability of white supremacy and other forms of anti-Asian racism. We also know that they cannot operate and reproduce themselves without the structures and institutions that empower them. As a professional organization, the Committee on Korean Studies will also remain committed to dismantling these structures and institutions, particularly in the sphere of knowledge.
In this respect, the Ramseyer article affair is connected to what we face in terms of anti-Asian and anti-Korean hatred in North America. Harvard Law School professor J. Mark Ramseyer had an article accepted by a peer-reviewed journal claiming that the Japanese empire’s system of forced military sexual labor was actually a system of volunteer, contracted prostitution. The record on this issue has been established by professional historians, and whatever nuance one may want to read into the problem of imperial subjectivity, there is no verifiable argument to be made that the system did not operate in large part through forced labor. In addition to believing the testimonies of the victims of the system and reading academic histories, all one has to do is consider the multiple industries relying on forced labor during that period of the Japanese empire and then ask, why would this system be organized differently? It is disturbing that an article that goes against logic and basic historical information could have passed peer review and been in preparation for publication.
The Ramseyer affair is an example of how racial and gendered violence in North America, Europe, and Asia, do not always express themselves in classifiable hate speech or hate crimes, but also in academic knowledge. As peer reviewers we should remain vigilant about basing academic freedom on evidence-based argument and critical inquiry. The same standards should apply to confronting the long and interconnected history of white supremacy and anti-Asian racism in the United States, from the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, to the Immigration Act of 1924, to Cold War Orientalism and anticommunism and their attendant systems of sexual violence, to anti-Japanese rhetoric in the 1980s, to contemporary virus-based racism. In addition to our activism, as scholars in Korean Studies we also have the power to continue to shape knowledge about Korea and Asia that recognizes the various histories of racial and gender discrimination and violence. We express our solidarity with others who have spoke on the Ramseyer article with these links to statements, articles, and events:
Korea Vision Dialogue on the Comfort Women Issue, University of Hawaii, Manoa, April 2021
Comfort Women: A Movement for Justice and Women’s Rights in the United States. Edited by Jung-Sil Lee and Dennis P. Halpin. Carlsbad, California: Hollym International Corporation, August 2020.
Yoshimi Yoshiaki. Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery in the Japanese Military During World War II. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002.