In 2008, five of the judges declared the law unconstitutional, arguing that adultery could be condemned on moral grounds, but not as a criminal act. The dissenting opinion is that the legalization of adultery undermines efforts to promote the family in South Korea. He cites statistics showing that 40 percent of South Korean marriages have ended in divorce since 2000. And between 2000 and 2006, at least 47.1 percent of these divorces occurred after one or more spouses cheated on them. Notable changes took place in the laws governing the institution of marriage in the 20th century. Marriages are neither permanent nor sacrosanct, as premarital sexual relations, cohabitation, divorce, separation, remarriage, mixed families and single parents are advocated and recognized. Despite widespread disapproval, adultery contradicts the usual morality of acceptable behavior, and laws that should support and preserve the sanctity of marriage are rarely enforced. Over the past six years, nearly 5,500 people have been accused of adultery, including nearly 900 in 2014. This was the case in 2008, when one of the country`s best-known actresses, Ok So-Ri, was given an eight-month suspended sentence for adultery. South Korea`s highest court on Thursday struck down a decades-old law banning adultery as unconstitutional, triggering a surge in actions by condom and morning-after pill manufacturers. “Even if adultery were to be condemned as immoral, state power should not interfere with the privacy of the individual,” Presiding Judge Park Han-Chul said.
Adultery is more of a moral crime than a legal crime in China. There is no legal provision to punish a person for adultery. South Korea has struck down a 60-year-old law banning adultery, while violators face up to two years in prison. At present, South Korea has legalized adultery and the Constitutional Court has ruled that adultery is a private matter and that the state should not interfere with people`s privacy. But this is changing because South Korean society has changed enough to lose many parts of the raison d`être (of the anti-adultery law),” the ruling judges said, according to a press release summarizing their decision. In 2008, the court upheld the law, citing the South Korean society`s legal view that adultery harms social order. Adultery is universally rejected, but 78% of married people were classified as infertile in a global survey of three-quarters of the population conducted in 40 countries. Although India has decriminalized adultery, it remains a criminal offense in Taiwan and the Philippines. But the law is differentiated according to the sex of the spouse in the Philippines. Adultery was a criminal offense in Japan until 1947. However, in April 2014, the first contemporary controversial case was discussed, in which the legitimacy of Makura Eigyo (pillow selling tactics) was discussed and the compensation procedure against an adulterous nightclub hostess was rejected. The decision stated that the man`s wife was not entitled to compensation from the hostess due to the commercial motive of the relationship – keeping a good customer was more of a constitutional agreement.
One of the few developed countries that criminalizes infidelity is the United States; The laws were against fornication, sodomy, adultery and cohabitation. Adultery remains a crime with extremely rare prosecutions in 21 states. Currently, adultery is decriminalized in European countries, which appears to be a contempt for domestic practice, but it can still have legal consequences in divorce proceedings. Seoul (AFP) – South Korea`s Constitutional Court on Thursday struck down a controversial adultery law that has criminalized extramarital sex for more than 60 years and jailed violations for up to two years. The main reason for the initial passage of the adultery law was the protection of women, the judges argued. The idea was that men – who tended to be economically and socially more powerful – exploited women. And if a man were criminally charged, it would give women more influence in divorce proceedings. (In other words, an injured woman could get more compensation after deciding to drop the charges.) In the past, adultery could only be prosecuted upon a complaint from an aggrieved party, and each case was immediately dismissed if the plaintiff dropped the charges – a common occurrence that often involved a financial settlement. History, religion and society abhor marital infidelity; Religious doctrine forbids adultery or condemns it as a sin or declares it a grave violation of the Dharma.
The last time the South Korean court reviewed this law was in 2008. Since then, about 5,500 people have been charged with adultery, according to South Korea`s Yonhap news agency, but that doesn`t mean they`ve ended up behind bars. In countries such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Somalia, Taiwan and Indonesia, adultery leads to fines, arbitrary detention, detention and flogging. The maximum penalty for adultery is the death penalty, an authoritarian government by a proprietor oligarchy. Although the law on adultery may have been excluded, social disapproval of marital infidelity remains strong. South Korea`s Constitutional Court on Thursday struck down a law that made adultery a crime, saying it violated the East Asian nation`s constitution. In April last year, South Korea blocked the new Korean version of the global adultery dating website Ashley Madison, saying it threatened family values. Seoul – South Korea`s highest court has struck down a decades-old law banning adultery, a law that has been described as anachronistic and violates individual freedom. Several thousand spouses file criminal complaints of adultery in South Korea each year, although incarceration is rare.
Prosecutors say no one was put behind bars last year, despite 892 adultery charges. “If the law doesn`t punish adultery and I can`t respond to my feelings of betrayal, I could take the law into my own hands,” Yoo said. Critics have said the law against adultery is outdated in a society where rapid modernization often clashes with traditional values. The law was based on the belief that adultery challenged social order and harmed families, but critics insisted it was an outdated law that represented state encroachments on people`s privacy.