Professor sacked after 'blasphemous' comments on Korean sex slaves

A photo of Kim Kun-ja, a “comfort women” victim who died on July 23, is carried from the House of Sharing in Gwangju, Gyeonggi Province, on July 25 as surviving victim Lee Yong-soo follows. The house features busts of deceased victims of sexual slavery for the Japanese military during World War II. / Korea Times file

By Ko Dong-hwan

Sunchon National University

Sunchon National University has dismissed one of its professors for making derogatory comments about Korean women who were forced into sexual slavery for the Japanese military during World War II.

Six out of seven members of the university’s disciplinary committee in the city of Sunchon, South Jeolla Province, chose the severest level of punishment for the professor, whose name is withheld, on Wednesday. He was charged with failing to fulfill his duty faithfully and failing to preserve his vocational dignity.

University President Park Jin-sung apologized for “those hurt by the blasphemous comments made by our school professor, especially the women who had gone through the ordeal in Japan.”

He said the school suspended the professor after the incident was reported in April and formed a task force to investigate the matter.

The professor, 56, from the university’s teachers’ college, made the comments during a lecture. He said many of the women, also known as “comfort women,” “probably knew that they were going to sexually serve the Japanese soldiers and thus voluntarily left for Japan.” He also said all the women were “crazy about Japan and would not have gone there if it weren’t for their (sexual) passion.”

The professor also made a misogynic comment against women in their 20s in front of students, referring to them as “a soccer ball shared by some 20 or so.”

Some students recorded his comments and later released the files, demanding an apology from the professor.

The committee’s decision becomes effective when the school’s president approves it. The professor can appeal.

He regretted the incident, saying he “must have been out of his mind because the class atmosphere at the time of my comment about comfort women was not good,” Newsis reported.