By Jung Min-ho
A local court has acquitted a 41-year-old woman of the charges of raping her husband, dismissing allegations that she forced him to have sex with her in May 2015 while he was tied up in bed.
The case marked the first time that a wife has ever been charged with marital rape since the country’s Supreme Court recognized it as a criminal offense in 2013 when a husband was convicted of raping his wife for the first time.
On Friday the Seoul Central District Court found the wife, whose surname is Shim, not guilty of the rape charges.
But the court sentenced her to a two-year prison term suspended for three years for confining him inside her house against his will for 29 hours and assaulting and threatening him.
Her boyfriend, whose surname is Kim, was also given an eight-month prison term suspended for two years for assisting her with the rape attempt.
“It does not appear that the husband had sex with her because of an irresistible force,” the court said. “Their conversation just before sexual intercourse suggests that he agreed to do so.”
Given that the husband was allowed to go to the bathroom before having sex and was able to use his arms to fight back at the time of sexual intercourse, the court said it didn't seem that he tried to resist.
“Also, it appears that Shim did not threaten her husband to have sex, and both of them said that the mood changed in a good way after having sex,” the court said.
Shim and her husband tied the knot in 2001. They later moved to Britain, where they lived together for years doing business. Their relationship started to fall apart in 2007, when Shim was found guilty of swindling international students there. Fines of hundreds of millions of won (hundreds of thousands of dollars) put them in financial trouble. They separated in April 2015, and returned to Korea the following month to go through divorce proceedings.
In order to obtain “favorable evidence” for divorce proceedings, Shim and Kim conspired to confine him in her house, where they forced him to say “I have an extramarital relationship, and I do not want to live with my wife any more. I am responsible for the divorce.”
During his confinement, sexual intercourse occurred, which the husband claimed was a rape. The incident was revealed after the husband called police.
Many countries from across the world, including the United States, Japan, France, Russia and Kenya, recognize marital rape as a criminal offense. The United Nations said in 2006 marital rape is prosecutable in at least 104 countries worldwide.