Hit him?
Kill him?
Cry?
Forgive?
Divorce?
How about... sending him to jail?
As it turns out, adultery is a crime in Korea and someone found guilty of cheating can face up to two years of jail time.
But I wonder… where is the line? How far should we allow the government to interfere in our personal lives?
Rousseau’s social contract - in which each individual gives up some of his/her personal freedom for the good of the greater society - didn’t discuss adultery. Maybe he should have.
After all, is cheating on your lover really a public matter? Is adultery posing a threat to society? Sure it is a moral issue, but shouldn’t we let individuals solve the matter?
Ironically, Time magazine tells that about 65 percent of Korean married men have dated other women after they married and 41 percent of women have dated other men.
More shockingly, a survey on 3,857 adults nationwide on adultery issues by a local weekly magazine revealed that nearly 68 percent of men and 12 percent of women said they had sex out of marriage.
A recent scandal brought a new wave of raging debates over whether the law should be repealed.
South Korean actor Park Chul pressed charges against his wife, popular TV star Ok So-ri, of cheating on him with his close friend and an Italian chef who was giving her private cooking lessons.
Admitting she indeed had an affair with the friend (not the chef), Ok, 39, took the issue one step further: she filed a petition in court, challenging the constitutionality of the 55-year-old adultery statute.
While the Constitutional Court has already ruled three times in favor of the adultery law (the last time was in 2001), Ok might have a good chance of winning this case – not only is it high-profile, but Korean society is rapidly changing (not necessarily evolving) and this might be a long overdue change.
It is true that Korean culture was (and still is, though not as much) strongly influenced by Confucianism and that back in the days women were treated as inferior to men.
Forbidden to work outside the house, not earning any sort of income, and forbidden to even think about divorce, women probably needed an adultery law. It was their only recourse against a cheating husband.
And it was probably very avant-gardist at that time.
But is such a law still appropriate today?
Could the Korean adultery law actually have become an anachronism? Or is it a permanent response to the West’s free-sex culture? Does such a law even have an impact; does it deter cheaters from cheating? And more importantly, does the punishment even fit the “crime”?
Each year, more than 1,200 people are indicted under the law and about half are convicted.
An article published in the Economist reveals that up to one-fifth of South Korean men between the ages of 20 and 64 pay for sex up to four times each month.
People need sex. They hire escorts. They go to prostitutes. They masturbate. Some attend orgies. Others have affairs.
But it is your problem if you married a cheater, a town bicycle. You can either forgive them, or divorce them.
Some guys I have discussed this with have actually told me that divorce could in some cases feel like getting out of jail. They don't think it would be fair to take them to an actual jail after they've finally escaped the emotional confinement of marriage (!)
Society should not have to pay the price of adultery - how expensive do you think it is to have someone in jail for 2 years? That’s 3 meals a day, electricity, guards, etc? If you cheat on someone you love, you need help/counsel; not jail time.
