A controversial law that punishes men found guilty of luring women into bed by pretending that they will marry them has been called unconstitutional by the Ministry of Gender Equality.. . .
The ministry said yesterday that it had delivered its opinion to the Constitutional Court that the statute should be scrapped because it discriminated against men and suggested that women are unable to exercise their right to sexual autonomy.
“The statue was based on past criminal codes which forced women to uphold their chastity,” said Jo Jin-wu, head of the women’s policy cooperation division in the ministry. “The view of treating women only as victims is also discriminatory.”
Currently, according to Article 304 of Korea’s Penal Code, “a person who induces a female not habitually immoral to engage in sexual intercourse under pretense of marriage or through other fraudulent means, shall be punished by imprisonment for not more than two years or by a fine not exceeding five million won ($4,058).”
In 2002, seven of the nine judges at the Constitutional Court ruled that the statute was constitutional after a challenge was made against the law.
Read the rest of that article. The Korea Herald reported on this as well:
The ministry's written opinion was submitted ahead of a hearing at the Constitutional Court on Thursday involving a Korean man, identified only as Lim, who was indicted for having sex with one of his female workers on four occasions under the fraudulent promise of marriage.
Lim claims the "outdated" criminal law violates his female partner's sexual rights as well as his own right to pursue happiness.
In addition to this law on the books, adultery is also a crime in South Korea.
4 comments:
This country has a bad rep of unusually high divorce rate.
Not that Korean men and women are a-holes, but a handful of important civil law codes are very backwards and lack compatibility with common sense.
"luring women into bed by pretending that they will marry them"
-- I think this is already a universal practice (and probably normal statistically), and any law that seeks to punish any accused person is brutally non-sense. If this law is applicable everywhere, then i can assume that more than half of the world's male population will spend sometime in jail.
I find the added comment about adultery to be a little strange, actually. In the US, many states have laws on the books criminalizing adultery. I know this because my own state, South Carolina, recently got some attention about the issue of adultery ...
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/06/30/politics/main5125930.shtml
Although, the fines are a little less steep. Only a year in jail and/or a $500 fine.
Early in his career Frank Sinatra was charged with exactly this offense, which was then called seduction.
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