Yes, you did read that headline right.
Over 5,500 people have been formally charged with the “crime” of adultery over the past six years. Nearly 900 were charged in 2014 alone.
There is a 1953 constitutional statute banning adultery in South Korea.
But no more. Adultery will finally no longer be an illegal activity, thanks to a motion by the Constitutional Court.
It’s the fifth time the court has mulled the change. This time it has been abolished at last.
“It has become difficult to say that there is a consensus on whether adultery should be punished as a criminal offence,” five of the court’s nine justices said in a joint statement. “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.”
South Korea was apparently one of the few non-Muslim countries in the world where extramarital sex is not legal. While arrests and charges were common, prison terms were very unusual.
53,000 were indicted under the law since the courts started counting in 1985.
216 people were jailed under the anti-adultery law in 2004. These figures have been falling: only 42 were jailed in 2008 and in the past years only 22.
Adultery is a common activity in Japan — Ashley Madison gained 1 million users in six months!
However, last year Korea blocked the Korean version after it launched. Talk about draconian!
The actress Ok Sori was given an eight-month suspended sentence in 2008 for adultery, after she was accused of the “crime” by her husband. The law had become a way of “naming and shaming” women. Ok Sori pursued the charges at the Constitutional Court, arguing that her human rights were being violated. She almost succeeded; the judges came within one vote of striking down the law.
The threat of being charged with the law had become a useful way for spouses to blackmail their unfaithful partners.
The conservatives and religious groups — Christianity is big in Korea — were up in arms.
However, it was good news for the people who facilitate the fun.
Share prices for leading condom maker, Unidus, rose by nearly 15%. Shares for morning-after birth control pills manufacturer Hyundai Pharmaceutical jumped 9.7%.
