SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA (KRON)– South Korea’s Constitutional Court overturned a law on Thursday that made adultery a crime.
The court said that the law violated the East Asian nation’s constitution.
For the past 62 years, if you cheated on your husband or wife in South Korea, you could have ended up in prison.
If convicted of adultery, one could spend up to two years in prison. The same could go for whoever “fornicated with the” cheating spouse, according to the Constitutional Court.
The prevailing judges said that South Korean society has changed enough to “lose many part of [the anti-adultery law’s] reason to exist.”
The original idea behind the law was to protect women. The idea was that men, who were usually economically and socially more powerful, took advantage of women.
But it’s no longer 1953 and even the current president of South Korea, Park Geun-hye, is a woman.
The judges said that women now are active both socially and economically and they no longer apply as economically weaker.
Seven judges agreed with the decision to repeal the law, but two dissented.
The dissenting judges said that legalizing adultery hurts efforts to promote family in South Korea.