Objective coverage of church-state and religious liberty developments, with extensive links to primary sources.
Friday, February 27, 2015
South Korea's Constitutional Court Invalidates Criminal Adultery Law
By a vote of 7-2 yesterday, South Korea's Constitutional Court struck down the country's 1953 law criminalizing adultery. The New York Times reports that an opinion joined by 5 of the Justices said that the law has often been misused to force a divorce or blackmail married women. Under the law, cases could be brought under the law only if a spouse brought a complaint, and prosecutors could not continue the case if a spouse chose to drop it. In four previous challenges to the law between 1990 and 2008, the Court had upheld it. Sungkyunkwan, a Confucianist organization, called yesterday's decision deplorable.