Adultery is no longer a punishable offence in South Korea

27 February 2015 - 12:14 By CHOE SANG-HUN
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A couple cheating on each other.
A couple cheating on each other.
Image: Thinkstock Images/Getty Images

South Korea’s Constitutional Court on Thursday struck down a 62-year-old law that made adultery an offense punishable by up to two years in prison, citing the country’s changing sexual mores and a growing emphasis on individual rights.

“It has become difficult to say that there is a consensus on whether adultery should be punished as a criminal offense,” five of the court’s nine justices said in a joint opinion. “It should be left to the free will and love of people to decide whether to maintain marriage, and the matter should not be externally forced through a criminal code.”

In their opinion, the five justices also said they doubted that the law was still useful in preventing adultery. Instead, they said, it has often been used by spouses to force a divorce or by those outside the marriage to blackmail married women who have cheated on their husbands. (The stigma of adultery is greater for women, making it harder to blackmail men who have committed adultery.)

An estimated 53,000 South Koreans have been indicted under the law since the authorities began keeping count in 1985. But in recent years, it has been increasingly rare for defendants to go to prison, in part because courts have demanded stronger proof that sexual intercourse occurred. Additionally, more plaintiffs have been dropping charges after reaching financial settlements with their spouses.

The law had been challenged four times before at the Constitutional Court since 1990, always unsuccessfully. In the last attempt, in 2008 - in a case brought by a popular actress, Ok So-Ri, whose husband had pressed a criminal complaint against her - the justices came within one vote of striking the law down.

The adultery law was adopted in 1953, with the stated purpose of protecting women who had little recourse against cheating husbands in a male-dominated society. But divorce rates and women’s economic and legal standing have soared in the decades since, leaving many to argue that the law had outlived its usefulness.

Others, however, considered the ability to open an adultery case a necessary option for wronged wives in a society that, despite its rapid change, is still largely male-centered.

Under the law, cases could be brought against people only by their spouses, and if a spouse chose to drop the complaint, the prosecutors could not continue.

Anh Il-Hwan, an official with the Ministry of Gender Equality, said Thursday that the ministry respected the court’s ruling.

“However, we need to prepare measures to protect the women victimized by adultery and will deliberate with relevant bodies to do so,” he said.

On Thursday, two other justices voted to declare the law unconstitutional for other reasons; one suggested that adultery should be punished, but not with a prison term. A two-thirds majority was required to strike down the law.

The remaining two justices voted to uphold the law, warning that abolishing it could lead to “disorder in sexual morality,” encourage extramarital affairs and undermine family life.

Three major women’s groups in South Korea supported the court’s decision to abolish what they called “an ineffectual law.” But its abolishment “doesn’t remove moral and ethical responsibility,” they said in a joint statement.

Sungkyunkwan, an organization of Korean Confucianists that had championed the law, called the ruling “deplorable” and said people should be ashamed of adultery.

Share prices for a leading condom manufacturer, Unidus, rose by nearly 15 percent on Thursday. Shares of Hyundai Pharmaceutical, which markets morning-after birth control pills, rose by 9.7 percent.

According to South Korean news media, analysts linked the rise of those share prices to the ruling because they began climbing as soon as the news was reported. Analysts said investors acted on the belief that the ruling might encourage extramarital affairs and use of condoms. -2015 New York Times News Service

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