The South Korean Constitutional Court at its plenary session on February 25, 2015, blazed the trail by striking down a 60-year-old law banning adultery by making it legal.
In an unprecedented judgement, the presiding justice, Park Han-Chul, remarked that though the act of adultery is bad and immoral, the state has no power to interfere with the individual lives of the people and as such, no one caught will be punished.
He said:
"Even if adultery should be condemned as immoral, state power should not intervene in individuals’ private lives."
In the past few years, close to 5,500 people have been formerly arraigned on adultery charges with 216 people jailed for 'committing' in 2004 alone, something liberals find to be infringing on people's rights.
In the past adultery could only be prosecuted on complaint from an injured party, and any case was closed immediately if the plaintiff dropped the charge, a common occurrence that often involved a financial settlement.
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