As you go in

Part 1: From Resistance to Accusation
1.
Seo Kyung-sik's attack
2.
Reviews immediately after publication
3.
Critical Grammar of Patriarchal Arrogance
-Responding to Lee Jae-seung's criticism of "Comfort Women of the Empire."
1) The origins of emotional 'confusion' - patriarchal thinking and legalism
2) About logical criticism
3) Responsibilities and positions
4) What is responsibility?
4.
Park No-ja's attack
1) Debate on Facebook
2) Additional response to Park No-ja
3) On the "Interpretation" of Jeong Yeong-hwan's "What is 'Reconciliation' for?" - Patchwork and Politics

Part 2 After the lawsuit
1.
The fight against the world's perception: "Comfort Women of the Empire"
2.
How Perception Creates Violence - On Seo Kyung-sik's Criticism
3.
Beyond the Politics of Memory: One Year After the "Comfort Women of the Empire" Accusation
1.
Changing perceptions surrounding the comfort women issue
2.
A Biased Understanding of 'World Thought'
3.
How to face history

Part 3: Hate Speech from Non-Experts
1.
The Japanese Military Comfort Women Issue and the 1965 Regime: Responding to Criticisms of Jeong Yeong-hwan's "Comfort Women of the Empire" 1
1.
Misreading and Misinterpretation: Jeong Yeong-hwan's "Method"
2.
On the criticism of “method”
3.
On the criticism of "For Reconciliation"
4.
Jeong Yeong-hwan's misunderstanding
2.
Where is the criticism headed? - Responding to the criticism of Jeong Yeong-hwan's "Comfort Women of the Empire" (Part 2)
1) Ethnicity and Gender
2) Postwar/Contemporary Japan and Korean-Japanese Intellectuals
3) Intellectuals' thoughts and violence
4) Criticism and Position
3.
A Rebuttal to the Criticism of 'Young Historians'
1.
2. About the criticism method.
3. Regarding the criticism.
About critical attitude
4.
Whose lie is this for?
- About Jeong Yeong-hwan's "For Whom Is 'Reconciliation'?: The Anti-historical Nature of [Comfort Women of the Empire]"
1.
Jeong Yeong-hwan's criticism and Korean media coverage
2.
The fundamental problem with Jeong Yeong-hwan's criticism
3.
Errors and lies
5.
Hate Speech: "Asking the Empire's Defender Park Yu-ha"
1.
Doubt
2.
Aspects of criticism
3.
colonial trauma

Part 4: Intervention by Researchers/Activists/Feminists on the Comfort Women Issue
1.
Kim Bu-ja - Intentional confusion and distortion
2.
Yang Jingzi - The feelings of a 'comfort woman' under management
3.
Inayoung Lee - The 'Decay' of Feminism
4.
Kim Chang-rok: Patriarchy as a Value Determinant
5.
Yang Hyun-ah: Feminism Permitted by Patriarchy
6.
Jeong Hee-jin - The Feminist's Error
7.
Park Kyung-shin - Patriarchal Nationalism
8.
Lim Kyung-hwa - The Politics of Ideology
9.
Kang Sung-hyun - Where Doubts Reach

Part 5: Response to the March 28 Research Meeting at the University of Tokyo
1.
The former comfort women are the ones filing the lawsuit.
2.
Gave an opportunity for 'criminal mediation'
3.
The lawsuit and the Jeong Dae-hyeop have nothing to do with each other.
4.
Denied responsibility for the Japanese military
5.
Ignored prior research
6.
I used a novel (by a Japanese man) rather than a source material.
7.
Manipulated data
8.
It's arbitrary
9.
The Korean and Japanese versions are different.
10.
There is no 'comradely relationship'
11.
Denied 'forced conscription'
12.
This is a strategic Korea-Japan reconciliation theory.

Epilogue

Appendix: Petitions and Statements
1.
Petition requesting dismissal of the injunction application for the “Comfort Women of the Empire” (2014.
7.)
2.
67 Japanese and American intellectuals protest the indictment of Professor Park Yu-ha (2015.
11.)
3.
Statement by 194 Intellectuals on the Criminal Indictment of the “Comfort Women of the Empire” (2015.
12.
2.)
4.
Appeal for participation in the lawsuit for the "Comfort Women of the Empire" after the defeat (2017.
12.
7.)

The prosecutor's request for a three-year prison sentence was created by those "intellectuals."

―Rebuttal to criticism/criticism of “Comfort Women of the Empire”
And a fundamental question to be posed to Korea's 'intellectuals'!

Why a courtroom and not an academic space or a plaza?
“The ‘Comfort Women of the Empire’ lawsuit incident is a case in which discussions that should have taken place in academic settings were forced to take place in a court of law.
The Korean and Japanese "intellectuals" who were critical of me not only did not invite me to the public sphere during this period, but they also turned a blind eye to the public's witch-hunt accusations and the trial.
(…) This book is my first attempt at a ‘public forum’ that I created myself because the academic world did not create it.”--- p.6

On June 16, 2014, Professor Park Yu-ha, author of 『Comfort Women of the Empire』, who was sued in civil and criminal cases and requested an injunction, including a publication ban, on charges of "defamation through publication" in the name of nine former comfort women, simultaneously published a book titled 『[Comfort Women of the Empire], 1460 Days in Court』, which organizes the background and process of the lawsuit that has been ongoing for four years since the lawsuit was filed, and a book titled 『[Comfort Women of the Empire], Speaks of Intellectuals』, which contains rebuttals to criticisms from scholars in Korea, Japan, the courts, and academia before and after the lawsuit.

As of June 2018, the criminal case for ‘defamation by false statement’ was ‘not guilty in the first trial, guilty in the second trial - 10 million won in fines’ and is currently on appeal to the Supreme Court. The injunction application was ‘partially accepted’ in February 2015, and Professor Park Yu-ha and the publisher issued the ‘2nd edition with 34 deleted places’ along with an ‘objection’. The civil damages claim lawsuit is currently on appeal after being sentenced to ‘10 million won in damages per plaintiff’ in the first trial.

Those intellectuals simply tried to preserve existing movements and research.
However, there are three things you must keep in mind when considering this lawsuit.

First, who is the subject of the lawsuit?
Second, is 『Comfort Women of the Empire』 really, as the plaintiffs and prosecutors claim, a book that “denies forced conscription and calls comfort women ‘prostitutes who went there voluntarily’”?
Third, if that is not the case, as the not guilty verdict in the first criminal trial suggests, then why on earth did the plaintiff and the prosecution file a complaint and indict Professor Park?
Since the accusation, countless people have criticized Professor Park Yu-ha, believing only the plaintiff and the prosecution's claims without verifying these basic facts, without reading the book, or through confirmation bias.
However, to talk about the 『Comfort Women of the Empire』 lawsuit, an accurate judgment on these three things is first necessary.

And more importantly, the author, who felt sorry for the extremely poor state of research on the comfort women issue in Korea compared to the level of interest (our understanding of the 'comfort women issue' has in fact relied on more than 90% of research by the Japanese), published a book that was merely the result of his own research and reflection/reasoning, and when it became the subject of civil and criminal lawsuits and prosecution by the state, how did 'intellectuals' respond, and how were they involved before that?
The author, Professor Park Yu-ha, says:

“I simply represented the ‘other voice’ of the comfort women grandmothers.”
“They just wanted to preserve the existing movement and research.”
“The prosecutor’s request for a ‘three-year prison sentence’ was created by those ‘intellectuals.’”
After the lawsuit was filed, there was criticism and finger pointing from countless media outlets, the public, politicians, and scholars, but at the center of this were activists, scholars, and feminists related to the comfort women issue, so to speak, mainstream figures in the comfort women issue.
They were directly or indirectly complicit in the state's punishment of individuals, and no one objected to the excessive public criticism, even though they knew better than anyone that "Comfort Women of the Empire" was not in line with the claims of those who "deny" the comfort women issue.
Of course, no one asked for the lawsuit itself to be withdrawn or for the attacks on Professor Park Yu-ha to stop.
They sometimes joined in by spreading the image of a phony scholar with the plausible expression, “I’m against going to court, but the book is nonsense,” or by going a step further and treating him as a “Japanese right-winger,” a “Nazi,” or a figure similar to “Eichmann,” or by leaving those who criticized him with such words alone.

The Current State of the Comfort Women Issue and Intellectuals
This book exposes how the "intellectuals" behind the scenes of the support group "Nanum's House" have been involved in and supported this lawsuit.
And beyond simple rebuttals, it analyzes what kind of thinking of 'intellectuals' led to such criticism.
The author says:
Even the so-called 'intellectuals' criticized/condemned things based on their own 'common sense', but they did not know how to have a 'reserved' attitude when encountering unfamiliar research methods.

In fact, 『Comfort Women of the Empire』 was also a sharp critique of the document-centeredness and stereotypical victim-centeredness of the historical academia.
The enthusiastic response to "Comfort Women of the Empire" in Japan stemmed from the sympathy for the new perspective it presented, and in academic circles, many scholars beyond their own fields praised the cutting-edge nature of the effort.
(See "For Dialogue - Unfolding the Question of [Comfort Women of the Empire]")
For several years now, Western/Japanese academic circles have been publishing research written from a different perspective than previous studies on the comfort women issue.
At the end of the book, the author quotes an academic book titled “Towards a Comparative History of War and Sexual Violence” published in Japan in February of this year, and says:


“It was this very realization that led me to write ‘Comfort Women of the Empire.’
I believe that the criticisms of scholars who wanted to dismiss the testimonies cited in “Comfort Women of the Empire” as “exceptions,” or even worse, as lies, were ultimately the result of a lack of awareness of this aspect.

So we can say it again:
You can't discuss the 'comfort women issue' and 'intellectuals' in Korean society without reading this book.