The Supreme Court Thursday ruled marital rape is a crime even between “normal” couples, reversing its own judgment 43 years ago. “Although civil laws call for married couples to share sex lives, it cannot mean the individuals’ abandonment of sexual autonomy,” the top court said.
It was a right, albeit belated, decision. Sexual intercourse against one’s consent is rape. Period. There can be no difference who forces it and where. Marriage cannot be a license for coerced sex.
That such a natural decision has come now reflects how male-dominated the Korean society is. Most Western countries, including Germany, France, America and Britain, removed marital exemption from rape between 20 and 40 years ago. As of 2006, 104 countries in the world had followed their examples, according to the United Nations.
Opponents of the spousal rape say the ruling risks increasing the rate of family breakups as well as its abuse and misuse by divorce-seeking women. We don’t find much reason for maintaining families that are only maintained at the expense of wives’ joy and wellbeing. And experience show that overemphasis of the adverse effects can bring about no meaning changes.
Sexual assaults, harassments and all other sexual approaches made against women’s intention are serious violations of human rights, as they lead to forced relationship by the use of power, physical or social or both. Particularly in Korea where men ― as superiors at work places, consumers at service shops, and patriarchs in families ― are accustomed to treating women as inferiors under their thumbs, increases the possibilities of abuse.
And this explains Koreans’ sexual hypocrisy shown by its widespread sex trade underneath the supposed fidelity, and maltreatment of women by men in power, such as the ongoing scandal involving a former presidential spokesman and a female intern.
Spousal trust and familial cohesion is important, but they should come only after the individuals’ dignity. The latest decision reaffirmed the commonsensical principle decades later than others.