Newly launched Korean version of the global adultery hook-up site Ashley Madison is seen as a threat to family values and has been blocked in South Korea where marital infidelity is a crime.
Infidelity
The Internet and the mobile phone with their instant connectivity are fast fuelling the incidence of infidelity in the modern world.
The Internet and the mobile phone with their instant connectivity are fast fuelling the incidence of infidelity in the modern world.
The Korea Communications Standards Commission (KCSC), a largely government-appointed body, said the website was an incitement to immorality.
"In light of the legal spirit of relevant laws aimed to protect healthy sexual morals, marriage bonds and family life, KCSC decided to block access to the site which incites adultery," the commission said in a statement.
South Korea is the second Asian country to block Ashley Madison after Singapore, which barred access in November for similar reasons.
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Ashley Madison CEO Noel Biderman believes the South Korean law is "hopelessly outdated" but still heeded legal advice not to attend the South Korea launch in person.
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"Infidelity is present in Asian culture, in the same way that it is present in every other culture in the world," he told AFP in a recent telephone interview from New York.
South Korea's adultery law is not much of a deterrent, and conviction usually results in a suspended sentence rather than actual jail time.
As an offence, it can only be prosecuted on complaint, and any case is closed as soon as the plaintiff drops the charge.
Whereas 216 people were given prison terms under the law in 2004, that figure had dropped to 42 by 2008.
But it remains on the statute books, despite half a dozen referrals for review to the country's Constitutional Court, and there is no great groundswell of opinion to have it removed.
In 2011, a Christian pastor was jailed for 18 months for having a decade-long affair with a woman whose wedding he had officiated at, after her husband named them both in an adultery complaint.
Source-AFP
