In South Korea, extramarital sex just got a whole lot safer, after the country’s highest court overturned a law banning adultery.



The abolition of the 62-year-old law on Thursday saw the share price of the country’s biggest condom maker, Unidus, surge 15% – the daily limit on the country’s Kosdaq market.



Despite South Korea’s economic rise in recent decades – Seoul, the capital, is one of the world’s most technologically advanced cities – a deep vein of traditionalism still courses through society. The law was passed in 1953 to protect wives who were financially dependent on their husbands. The country’s economy was largely agricultural and women had few property rights. More recently, supporters of the law have argued that it preserves conservative family values amid a surge of modernisation.

Seven of the court’s nine judges voted to overturn the law, which carried a maximum penalty of two years in jail.



“The law is unconstitutional, as it infringes people’s right to make their own decisions on sex and secrecy and freedom of their private life, violating the principle banning excessive enforcement under the constitution,” said constitutional court justice Seo Ki-seok.



The presiding justice, Park Han-chul, said: “Public conceptions of individuals’ rights in their sexual lives have undergone changes.”



One dissenter, justice Ahn Chang-ho, said the vote would “spark a surge in debauchery”.



Despite the harsh maximum sentence, in recent years very few of the accused have spent time behind bars. Charges are frequently dropped, as divorcing couples increasingly turn to civil courts and financial settlements to resolve their differences.



Judicial authorities have revisited the law five times since 1990, most recently in 2008, when the actor Ok So-ri admitted to having an affair with a singer, sparking a high-profile scandal; her husband, a radio announcer, demanded that she receive the full sentence. Ok petitioned the constitutional court, and five judges voted in her favour — one fewer than the threshold to have the law overturned. She was handed a suspended sentence, and did not spend time in jail.



Since then, prosecutors have indicted 5,400 people on the charge. Last year alone, 892 people were indicted.



South Korea has one of the lowest birth rates in the world, behind only Singapore, Japan, the French overseas collectivity of Saint Pierre and Miquelon and Monaco, according to the CIA World Factbook. On average, each woman has about 1.2 children, compared with 1.9 in the UK.

Unidus produces lines of condoms called Long-Love, Fantasia and Real Touch, as well as “sensual lubricants” and latex medical products such as surgical gloves.

