Former Yonsei University professor Lew Seok-choon arrives at the Seoul Western District Court in Seoul on Wednesday, to attend his sentencing trial. (Yonhap)
A former Yonsei University professor indicted for making disparaging remarks against Korean victims of Japan's wartime sexual slavery was acquitted of defamation charges by a court on Wednesday.
The Seoul Western District Court said it found Lew Seok-choon, who previously taught sociology at the prestigious university in Seoul, not guilty of defaming the Korean sexual slavery victims, euphemistically called "comfort women," during a lecture five years ago.
Lew, a 69-year-old right-wing scholar, was accused of calling comfort women "kind of prostitutes" during his lecture on Sept. 19, 2019, while denying they were forced by the Japanese government to work in military brothels during World War II.
The court ruled that Lew's remarks cannot be seen as ones directed at individual victims and are rather general abstract expressions directed at all Korean comfort women. Based solely on evidence presented by the prosecution, his remarks cannot be considered an act of defamation, it added.
"Considering the overall content, expressions and context of the defendant's lecture, his remarks seem close to the effect that the (victims) became comfort women through a process similar to an employment fraud. They go against conventional wisdom and the analogy is inappropriate," the court said.
Considering the constitutional protection of academic freedom and freedom of professors at universities, restrictions on professors should be limited to the minimum necessary, it noted.
But the court levied a fine of 2 million won ($1,500) on Lew for defaming the Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan, a nongovernmental organization, by saying that the council trained comfort women to testify as if they had been forcibly mobilized by the Japanese military. (Yonhap)
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