South Korea’s sex laws: a sex-criminal’s perspective

South Korea is one of the strangest and most perplexing countries on Earth. I taught English there for one year, and when I finally fled that mad peninsula, my sanity in ruins, I vowed to keep a watchful eye on the place. Most Westerners are so preoccupied with North Korea that the shenanigans of the South Koreans are often overlooked—I say no longer!

Dear reader, welcome to the first Glen Callender UFA Korea update. Today’s topic: sex crime and punishment! As you’ll soon see, South Korea’s sex laws are so ass-backward you’ll think they were written in Bizarro World. Plus, for the first time in blog, I’ll implicate myself in the breaking of not one but TWO stupid sex laws! Read on....

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BBC, November 26 2008:

Korean adulterer faces jail term

South Korean prosecutors have demanded an 18-month jail term for a popular actress who admitted breaking the country's strict laws on adultery.

Ok So-ri had sought to overturn the 50-year old legislation, which carries a maximum jail sentence of two years.

She said it was an infringement of human rights and amounted to revenge.

But in October the constitutional court ruled for the fourth time that adultery must remain a crime, saying it was damaging to social order.

Ms Ok has admitted having an affair with a well-known pop singer and her husband, Park Chul, is said to be seeking “a severe sentence”.

She blamed her infidelity on a loveless marriage to Mr Park, also an actor, and launched a legal challenge against the adultery law itself.

But the court ruled that the adultery law did not violate the right to “sexual self-determination and privacy” and that the available punishment was appropriate.

“Society still recognises that adultery damages social order,” said the court.

“The punishment of a two-year jail term is not excessive when comparing it to
responsibility.”

Ms Ok’s lawyers have said the legislation “has degenerated into a means of revenge by the spouse, rather than a means of saving a marriage”.

The Korean Times says that in the past three years about 1,200 people have been indicted annually for adultery, but very few have been jailed.

The case has created a sensation in South Korea, say correspondents, where many have denounced what they see as an archaic law.

South Korea is one of the only countries outside the Muslim world that criminalizes adultery. When one considers the rich extramarital sex lives of married Koreans, however, one suspects that this is actually more of an aphrodisiac than a deterrent.

And I should know, because I, like so many other foreign English teachers, have given of my own genitals so this infamous law could be violated.

I won’t go into the dirty details of that sordid little tryst now—I promise I will someday, as it’s a very silly story—but suffice to say that she was a MILF-tastic 42-year-old mother of three, she was enraged because her husband was out seeing his girlfriend, and her boisterous one-night stand with me was a no-holds-barred revenge fuck of the filthiest kind.

It was the first sex crime I’d been involved in since the time I was anally deflowered by a 17-year-old Lothario who’d told me he was 22. (The age of consent for anal intercourse in Canada is officially 18, but courts have ruled this unconstitutional because it doesn’t match the age of consent for vaginal sex, which is 16. In retrospect, I’m proud to have unwittingly broken this unjust law. Verily, are not bad sex laws, like the vexatious hymen, made to be broken?)

But I digress. For the next paragraph to be fully appreciated, you must know that dong is the Korean word for “district”. Got that? Good.

A cursory exploration of my humble dong would have revealed that I wasn’t the only foreign devil aiding and a-bedding these conjugal criminals. A friend had a married co-worker regularly dropping by for a lunchtime romp, and things were just dandy until her husband found out.

But did this Korean cuckold file a criminal charge against his cheating wife? No, because her affair wasn’t public knowledge, and therefore no damage had been done to the all-important family reputation. Charging his wife with adultery would have publicly exposed the fact that she had not only cheated, she had cheated with (gasp!) a foreigner—a great humiliation not only for him and his wife, but for his entire family, including every ancestor all the way back to the dawn of mammalian life. So instead, he simply forbade her from seeing my friend again, and their loveless sham of a marriage was saved. Huzzah!

This is how the vast majority of Korean couples resolve issues of sexual infidelity. Celebrity couples such as Ok So-ri and her husband, however, prefer to invoke draconian old laws and air out their dirty laundry in the tabloids. And so the nation is transfixed by the real-life high drama of a famous actress going to prison for adultery—South Korea’s unofficial national sport.

Meanwhile, in Cheongju, South Korea—which is, coincidentally, the very place I lived and loved for a year of my life—another controversial judgment was handed down. Be warned; if you haven’t been utterly stunned yet today, this next bit will do it.

The Korea Times, Nov 24 2008:

Court ruling on rapists draws anger

A court handed down suspended jail terms to four family members who repeatedly raped a teenage relative who suffered from an intellectual disability.

The Cheongju District Court Thursday sentenced an 87-year-old grandfather and two uncles of a 16-year-old girl to four-year suspended prison terms for sexually assaulting and raping the girl for the last seven years. Another uncle received a three-year suspended jail term.

The court acknowledged that their crime was “sinful” as they used the young girl, who is their family member, to satisfy their sexual desires. But it gave them suspended terms, saying, “The accused have fostered the girl in her parents’ place. Considering her disability, she will also need their care and help in living in the future.”

The court added it took the accused people’s old age and illness into consideration.

Citizens strongly denounced the ruling, saying the punishments were too lenient for the grave crime. Internet users said it is absurd to release them to “take care of her,” as she needs help from others, not from rapists. They also said those committing such a crime do not deserve consideration regarding old age or illnesses.

Some bloggers are collecting signatures to oust the judge who made the ruling. The prosecution also decided to appeal. “One of them even has a previous conviction for rape but was given a suspended term. The ruling is unacceptable,” a prosecutor said.

Let’s recap. In South Korea, an adult female has consensual sex with a man who is not her husband, and gets thrown in jail. Meanwhile, four adult men (including a convicted rapist) gang-rape an underage, mentally handicapped female relative for seven years—starting when she was just nine—and receive no jail time. And the poor girl is obliged to remain dependent on the “care and help” of her abusers, because the government is unwilling to support her.

Bizarro World, indeed. In the immortal words of Yakov Smirnoff:

“What a country!”

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Coming soon: a prominent British doctor draws a fearful link between stock market turmoil and irresponsible sex at Christmas parties. Will the economy recover before we’re all infected? Stay tuned!

Until next time, I remain, as ever, your ajumma who never says hajima,

Glen Callender UFA.

Vancouver, Canada