By Bernard Rowan
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According to a 2016 study by Lina Korea, over half of Korean men have had one or more affairs, and 40 percent didn't consider paying for sex as adultery. Also, 10 percent of women admitted to cheating.
I don't think these numbers are shocking compared with other countries. Humans are a randy bunch. Acts of infidelity characterize large numbers, even majorities of respondents, across many countries. However, when these acts compromise the trust and confidence in a marital bond, it's doubly wrong. I'm not excusing it. I'm not the judge. I believe in forgiveness but trying again doesn't always work. Adultery continues to plague and destroy marriages. It's always done so. It'll always do.
Running through recent studies, polls, and analyses of Korean society are two important trends. One is women's growing power as a gender class. Most cheating is done by men. Women no longer accept it stoically, if at all. More women work, more women head households, and more women have market power in the labor force. While inexcusable inequalities persist, more women have the education, money, and ability to survive without a husband, let alone without a cheating husband. Wives of unfaithful men can walk or run should they decide to do so.
A second trend is more difficult to gauge, but I'd argue it's equally powerful. Koreans have gained a greater sense of individuality ― not only in gender terms, but as people. Koreans don't define their relations as hierarchically as in the past, even within a Confucian society. More people want self-development. It mayn't qualify as a right. However, Koreans as individuals now want to grow and follow lives based on personal goals and ambitions. I don't want to overstate it, but growing individuality makes a sense of autonomy possible. Koreans can refuse betrayals in any bond.
Many pundits and scholars hailed the end of Korea's adultery law. I'm not arguing for its reinstatement. The law didn't treat cheating men the same as cheating women, nor did its application do so. It didn't stop men taking lovers or having kept women. It couldn't do so without inviting a totalitarian society.
Korea's divorce rate, according to Statista.com, has remained at 2.1 per 1000 people for the last four years. Just over one hundred thousand people divorced in 2017. Still, that's an astounding number. The two trends of women and individual power also show in the declining number of marriages and in later marriages, as well as marriages with fewer children.
The core reason for infidelity and adultery are the conception that one's partner is not the total right, good, and proper person for sex, passion, love, and friendship within a marriage. Instead, men and women treat love as more or less consumption and enjoyment. They don't act like sex, passion, love and friendship want a monogamous bond for life. That's true but not necessarily right or good.
Love and commitment then amount to commodities bought and sold. People treat themselves as something less than noble beings with ardent, enduring, and mutually committed ties. Instead, too many treat marriages like an economics of love. We see the horror stories each day. The respectable versions of them don't pale much by comparison if their effects and motives find expression.
There is every suggestion, in South Korea and elsewhere, that many marriages are shams. Sadly, marriage as an institution often subordinates itself to self-gratification and financial considerations. It's not good.
Bernard Rowan (browan10@yahoo.com) is associate provost for contract administration and professor of political science at Chicago State University. He is a past fellow of the Korea Foundation and former visiting professor at Hanyang University.
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