Actress Ok So-ri gets suspended sentence for adultery.

In one of the few news stories out of South Korea to get coverage internationally, actress Ok So-ri was given a suspended sentence for having extramarital sex with another man without being paid for it. Ok was having sex with a foreigner while married to entertainer Park Chul, an act illegal because she wasn't doing it at a massage parlor and wasn't earning any money from it.

It has been more than 50 years since the adultery law was introduced to Korea to protect women from a male-dominated society.

An article on the topic of adultery from 2002 looks more into the idea of "protection," and says some womens' groups say that criminalized adultery and the threat of prosecution actually works to keep families together, or, failing that, provides women with a safety net in the case of divorce.

The Constitutional Court has decided that the law is constitutional, even while noting the unfavorable side effect of abuse of the adultery law as a coercive tool and the worldwide trend to abolish adultery laws. The court recommended a sincere discussion on the issue.

According to a recent report by the Prosecutors Office, 60 percent of the 11,000 adultery charges filed are subsequently dropped -- often because the adulterer and his spouse have reached a settlement. The criminal justice system, in other words, is being abused as a lever for producing cash settlements.

. . .

Women's rights groups defend such uses of the law. Yang Jung-ja, chairwoman of the Korea Family Legal Service Center, asserts that suing for adultery is one of the few means at a woman's disposal to secure a solid living after divorce.

Adultery is losing its grip as a crime taken seriously by the criminal justice system, says Cho Kwang-hee, an attorney. In 1984, 95 percent of those indicted for the crime were detained. In 1998, that figure had fallen to 66 percent. Court judgments show that while the number of persons punished for adultery has remained about the same -- 28 percent of cases in 1984, 27 percent in 1998 -- those given suspended sentences have increased in the same period from 11 percent to 34 percent.

Many women rely on the adultery laws to return their husbands home. But analysts note that this too is often a makeshift solution. A woman in her mid-50s forgave and dropped her lawsuit five years ago, only to find that her husband strayed again. She has decided to part for good.

This blog entry has some second-hand information about what happens when one spouse accusses the other of adultery, but I have no idea how factual it is. But I'll quote some anyway.

Here's the deal: if a married person (in Korea this is usually a man) has an affair and is caught then the both of them can go to jail for four (if a high-priced lawyer is used) to six (if not) months. Not only that, but as soon as the adultery charges are laid divorce preceedings begin and if found guilty the couple are automatically divorced at the end of the trial. Many younger folk are up in arms about this: they claim that the punishment is too harsh. I figure that jail time for adultery is a little steep, too. Wouldn't it be better to put drunk drivers (I know there are some here) in those cells?

But, as with so many things, this is not as it seems. For one, the only person that can lay adultery charges is the wife; and it's supposed that about 1% of wives actually do this because of the social stigma--and the fact that they'll be divorced if it's true...although with a conviction she'd get more out of the guy in alimony.

As well, the burden of proof is something like that in a capital case. Get this: if the two are just fooling around then it's not adultery. There needs to be complete, um, penetration (sorry, trying to make this as G-rated as possible) in, um, the spot. Just oral fixations are not enough. Also, there needs to be physical evidence: sperm, to be exact. So if nothing, um, 'big' happens then no crime. (Obviously, as you may have guessed, if the gal remains a virgin then the both of them are Scot-free...which seems a little odd, to say the least.)

Here's an anecdote: wife suspects an affair; she finds out the two are in a hotel together; she alerts the police who go there and enter the room; they find him and the girlfriend naked in the room. No arrest. Why? Well, they were just talking and they had their clothes off because it was so hot...no penetration, no physical evidence, no case. The wife didn't give up, though--she gathered 'evidence' from many used rooms and won her case and got her divorce and a big severance package. (Why the husband wasn't scared straight after the police raid I'll never figure out.)

All that said, and the bit about protecting women taken into account, the idea of criminalizing adultery in Korea is kind of LOL-inducing. LOL both because it's targetting women and because it's hypocritical to be so Puritan about marriage while allowing prostitution to thrive. In spite of noisy crackdowns every now and again, prostitution is estimated to have accounted for 1.6% of the country's GDP last year, with more than 46,000 brothels accounting for roughly 94 million transactions, though all three figures were considerably higher a few years ago. That awkward euphamism isn't mine, by the way. And, I'm delighted to remind you we're coming up on the two-year anniversary on one of my favorite bits of Korean news, which highlights just how prevalent prostitution is both in general and in corporate culture.

Male workers who vow to stay away from prostitutes after year-end celebrations in South Korea are to be rewarded.

The Ministry for Gender Equality is offering cash to companies whose male employees pledge not to pay for sex after office parties.

Men are being urged to register on the ministry's website. The companies with most pledges will receive a reward.

Officials say they want to put an end to a culture in which men get drunk at parties and go on to buy sex.

Not to change the subject, but here's an interesting fact from the AFP article about the OK case:

According to a survey quoted by newspapers last year, nearly 68 percent of South Korean men and 12 percent of women confessed to having sex outside marriage.

So I guess Korean men are philanderers and Korean women are liars. And there are so many motels around because Koreans really like to travel.