Dead scarlet letter

[Van!]

http://www.economist.com/news/asia/21645363-country-last-repeals-law-made-infidelity-crime-dead-scarlet-letter

The Economist

Adultery in South Korea

Dead scarlet letter

The country at last repeals a law that made infidelity a crime

Feb 27th 2015 | SEOUL | Asia

[1] WHEN, in 2008, a South Korean soap star accused his celebrity wife, Ok So-ri, of a dalliance with an Italian chef giving her private cooking lessons, the real-life melodrama prompted heated debate on the country’s changing sexual mores. The cuckold pressed charges against Ms Ok and her lover (another man, by her own admission). Under South Korea’s harsh adultery law, enacted in 1953, she faced up to two years in prison.

[2] But Ms Ok went on to challenge the country’s highest court on the constitutionality of the law, which she felt was no more than “a means of revenge”. Its original intention was to offer a wronged spouse—assumed then to be a woman—legal recourse to prosecute a licentious marriage partner and thus receive a financial settlement or child custody. Ms Ok’s petition was one vote short of overturning the law. But this week, on February 26th, the constitutional court finally decriminalised infidelity, supporting “people’s right to make their own decisions on sex and secrecy”. The 5,500 people or so convicted under the law since 2008 can now ask for their cases to be reconsidered.

[3] Before the repeal South Korea was one of just a handful of countries in Asia to criminalise adultery, along with the Philippines and Taiwan. Enforcement of the law, however, had already ebbed. From over 1,200 in 1987, the number of imprisoned adulterers dropped to 47 in 2007. Last year almost 900 were charged but none were jailed. Cheaters must be caught in flagrante; spouses would tip off the police, who would raid the hotel room where their partner was cavorting with a lover, to gather photos and perhaps soiled bed sheets as evidence. But increasingly accusers have dropped charges after reaching financial arrangements.

[4] Support for decriminalisation is not new. Since 1989 the constitutional court had four times before reviewed the law; already in 1990, one of its judges felt that “fidelity guaranteed through criminal punishment” was not genuine fidelity. Feminist groups supported its abolition. It has become “meaningless”, says Lee Yun-su, president of the Korea Institute of Sexology, as more women have become aware of their rights to sexual freedom. Indeed many say that women have suffered more from the law than men: though both file complaints in roughly equal numbers today, husbands are still much more likely to press charges.

[5] Public opinion, however, has been slow to change: in a survey of 2,000 adults released this month by the state-run Korean Women’s Development Institute, almost two-thirds said infidelity ought to be punishable by law. Yet there is scant evidence that criminalising promiscuity limits it. Indeed in the same poll four in ten married men and almost 7% of married women said they had cheated on their spouses. Rather than promoting marital union, some think the law has damaged it by requiring the plaintiff to file for divorce.

[6] Cho Kuk, a lawyer at Seoul National University, says the law was evidence of a strong moralist tradition in the country’s criminal code. Societal norms continue to borrow from paternalistic Confucian values. Until the 19th century, an adulterous Korean wife could be expelled from her husband’s home, considered guilty of one of “seven sins” that were then grounds for divorce (others included contracting serious disease, failing to produce a male heir and talking excessively). Then, rich, unchaste husbands, on the other hand, enjoyed the benefits of an official concubine system.

[7] Last year the Korea Communications Standards Commission requested that government censors block a Canadian online dating service promoting extramarital encounters (“Life is short. Have an affair”) to “protect healthy sexual morals, marriage bonds and family life.” The firm is now reportedly eager to try its luck once again in South Korea. If its ban is lifted, it seems it will not be disappointed: following the court’s ruling, Reuters reported that shares in a condom company and a firm manufacturing the morning-after pill surged.

[내가찾는아이]

repeal : (법을) 폐지하다
soap star : 인기 드라마 배우
dalliance : 치정, 놀아남
mores : 관습, 풍습
cuckold : 바람난 아내를 둔 남자 (옛날 말투로 못마땅항 어투라고 하네요~ 이코노미스트에서는 옥소리 남편을 나쁘게 보나봐요)
wronged : 부당한 학대를 받은
recourse : 의지
licentious : 음란한
petition : 탄원서
ebbed : 서서히 약해졌다
in flagrante : (범죄, 특히 간통) 현장에서
raid : 급습하다
cavort : 신이 나서 뛰어 다니다
soiled : 때묻은
Korean Women’s Development Institute : 한국 여성 정책 연구원
scant : 거의 없는
promiscuity : 난혼
plaintiff : 원고, 고소인
paternalistic : 가부장적인

[Van!]

감사합니다 ^^

[내가찾는아이]

unchaste : 정숙하지 못한
concubine : 첩
Korea Communications Standards Commission : 방송통신심의위원회
cf) Korea Communications Commission : 방송통신위원회
reportedly : 전하는 바에 따르면

내용이 흥미로워서 모르는 단어들 찾아봤어요~ 저의 어휘 실력은 아직도 한참 부족하다는 걸 느끼고 가네요 ㅠㅠ

[Lumière]

reportedly보다는 현지에서는 allegedly 라는 표현을 더 많이 써요 :) reportedly는 보도 내용에 근거할 때 쓰는것입니다. 도움이 되었길 바랍니다!

[마틸다]

흥미로운 내용이군요, 바람직하진 않지만.