Women’s university to sue politician over insulting remarks

Ewha Womans University in South Korea said on Tuesday 2 April that it will take legal action against a general election candidate from the main opposition Democratic Party for making sexually insulting remarks about its students and alumni, writes Yoo Cheong-mo for Yonhap News Agency.

The nation’s first and largest women’s university responded after it became known that Kim Jun-hyeok, the Democratic Party (DP) candidate now running for parliament in the Suwon D district of Gyeonggi Province, 30 kilometres south of Seoul, claimed Ewha students were forced to offer sexual favours to US military officers for years after Korea’s liberation from Japan’s colonial rule in 1945. The university issued a statement urging Kim of the DP to resign from his election candidacy and vowed to take legal action against him for defaming the school and all its members.

Kim, a professor-turned-politician, said on a YouTube channel in August 2022 that Kim Hwal-lan, the first president of Ewha Womans University, played a big role in sending wartime “comfort women” to Japan and she also forced Ewha students to provide sexual favours to US military officers during the US military’s rule of the southern half of the Korean Peninsula from 1945 to 1948.
Full report on the Yonhap News Agency site