[ Music ]
SIMON: Today we're going to be talking about a really chipper topic
MARTINA: Yup.
SIMON: -- about the decriminalization of adultery in Korea
which seems to be all over the news lately.
MARTINA: Now the problem is I've seen this popping up
in a lot of headlines overseas
but it basically says,
"Korea gets rid of the adultery law! Condom sales soar!"
SIMON: But there's a lot more to the situation than just that.
So we want to break it down for you a little bit
so you could understand the law
the pros and cons of it as well.
Since 1953, it was illegal to commit adultery in Korea
and you could go to jail for it.
MARTINA: And not cheating like, I'm dating
and someone's cheating on someone.
We mean adultery as in within a marriage.
SIMON: Since the passing of the law,
over a hundred thousand people in South Korea were convicted of it
but over the past few years the convictions have really been dwindling.
Some people are arguing that it's a lot more
difficult to prove that you're having an affair with someone.
Like, you can go into a hotel room with them and you can leave
but it doesn't actually prove that you did the hokey-pokey in there.
MARTINA: We were playing Parcheesi.
SIMON: Exactly!
MARTINA: We're really into Scrabble.
SIMON: We were having a discussion.
Do you have pictures of any --
MARTINA: -- objects entering other objects?
SIMON: And if not, then how can you actually prove
that the act of adultery was committed?
Over the past five years alone,
over 5,000 people were convicted of it,
and, actually, 22 people went to jail for it.
Which in our day and age seems kind of odd.
I don't actually know of anybody else who went to jail for committing adultery
-- for cheating on their husband or wife.
MARTINA: So then why was this law suddenly removed?
Well, I'm going to quote something here.
The Constitutional Court of Korea said that,
"Even if adultery should be condemned as an immoral act,
state powers should not intervene in an individual's private life."
SIMON: So essentially what they're saying is
that it is not in their jurisdiction to punish people
for committing immoral acts of adultery.
MARTINA: Now while I don't think adultery is a good thing
I do think that sending someone to jail for it
is a little bit extreme.
So in that case getting rid of the law, to me,
seems like it makes sense.
It's kind of like updating an old-fashioned law.
But there are other parts of the law
that I think are going to create major problems
for people now who are trying to get a legitimate divorce
because someone was cheating on them.
So essentially when this law still existed,
if you found out your husband or wife was cheating on you
you could put it on, like, your divorce forms.
You could say, like, adultery.
And then the judge would say,
"Oh, this is a law."
Like, you cannot do that. You've broken the law.
But now it means if you put it on your form
Like, you say, reasons for divorce: Adultery,
the court can say, this isn't a law anymore.
SIMON: Right.
So it's not that they don't think about it
as reasons for going into divorce
it's just not, like, a strong reason
whereas before it was, like, a law.
SIMON: You can't just say my husband broke
the law, and thus I have more grounds for a divorce.
Now it becomes a lot more difficult to argue
for a divorce if you want one.
MARTINA: And the reason why this law existed to begin with
is that originally people said that it was there protecting women's rights
because traditionally in Korea,
women are usually at home being the housewife.
And the husband's usually at work.
SIMON: And prostitution is really, really rampant here in Korea.
MARTINA: Super rampant.
SIMON: Ultra rampant!
MARTINA: And people work really long hours
so it's like, if you're at home as a housewife and
your husband comes home at, like, 4:00 a.m.,
and, like, where -- what are they doing?
Are they at a meeting? Are they partying?
There's so many different options available to people
if they do want to cheat on somebody.
So the point of this law was that
a lot of women didn't have any money when trying to divorce somebody
because they were not the person making money.
They were just the housewife.
So they found out their husband was cheating on them
and they take them to court for that.
And then they can get, like, 50/50 -- that kind of a settlement.
SIMON: There was also another argument against this law
and that it goes against the original spirit of the law
in which husbands now were trying to blackmail
now "erratic" housewives into being complacent
by saying that they will take them to court
for breaking the law of adultery
even if it didn't happen.
They'd just use it for blackmail in this respect.
MARTINA: Because remember, this law wasn't specifically against men.
It's for anyone committing adultery.
So if a woman is caught having an affair,
or a man is caught having an affair,
both parties could use this law.
But not anymore.
Some people say that this is actually a good thing
because apparently there have been some crazy housewives
that have been trying to use this against their husbands for maybe --
SIMON: That have been trying to use the system in order to
screw their husbands over
to get the money that they want to get out of them.
MARTINA: Yeah -- who have not been committing adultery is the argument.
SIMON: Right.
MARTINA: You know, the other thing we didn't mention is that
this was actually being put on people's criminal records, too.
SIMON: Yeah.
MARTINA: Which I also didn't think was cool. Like --
SIMON: Exactly.
MARTINA: It's your own...
SIMON: You apply for a job and you have this criminal record of being --
MARTINA: Committing adultery.
SIMON: -- a lecherous adulterer.
MARTINA: Yeah, I don't think that should be going on your resume.
So I'm okay with the no jail time
and taking it off your criminal record.
But...
I juuuuuuuuuust feel like this is
opening a can of worms for people
who really, really honestly need to divorce.
Okay. So now what have we seen happening in Korea since then?
SIMON: As might have heard,
condom sales have gone through the roof.
They have really...
*exploded*
MARTINA: Oh, no.
SIMON: They've really...
MARTINA: Expanded their reach.
SIMON: Expanded their reach!
What other dick joke can we do here?
MARTINA: It's really grown.
We've seen a rapid growth.
SIMON: We've seen a rapid growth!
It's pointing straight upwards!
The sales!
MARTINA: If we were to look at the profit share charts
We would see that they are...
SIMON: It would be a silhouette of a c----!
MARTINA: Okay. All right.
And also there's been an increase in registration
of people on online dating sites,
specifically ones that were actually not even allowed
to exist in Korea because of the law.
Like, they were known like --
do you wanna cheat on your husband or wife?
SIMON: There was a famous adultery website that lets you cheat
and it was prevalent in North America.
And they tried to set up shop in Korea
but then it was blocked because of this law.
MARTINA: They said no.
SIMON: Now that this law is passed,
this site is now able to legally function within Korea.
MARTINA: And they were fast about it.
SIMON: Yeah.
MARTINA: It was like, uhh --
SIMON: Didn't this site launch just a couple of weeks ago?
MARTINA: Yeah, it's crazy.
It just, like, popped up right away.
So somebody's been, like, sitting around being like,
"Yes! Finally!"
SIMON: GOOD!
MARTINA: But see, do you know what I find upsetting about this?
Is that we already know that prostitution is a problem in Korea.
SIMON: Mm-hmm.
We know there are so many redlight districts.
You can see, like, host bars for both men and women.
SIMON: Yeah.
You know, you can go to a noraebang, and go to
a "special noraebang" where people come and "sing" with you
and you know, already all this stuff exists.
And a lot of that stuff is already run by, like,
seedy parts of Korea.
SIMON: Mm-hmm.
MARTINA: So it's like, basically
they're allowing the seediest part, like, the
Mafia part, to now make tons of more money.
SIMON: Exactly.
MARTINA: I don't know.
SIMON: So to conclude, we're happy that you
can now no longer go to jail for having an affair
but we're also worried that those people that are
trying to get out of a marriage
might have more difficulty in a court of law to do so.
I'm hoping that this change in the law doesn't
get in their way of resolving a bad marriage.
MARTINA: So here's our question for you today.
First off, do you think that you should go to jail
for committing adultery or do you think
it's a good idea that, you know what,
you probably shouldn't be going to jail because of adultery.
SIMON: Should adultery be illegal?
Supposedly, in 23 states in the United States of America,
it is illegal.
I just found that out, like, right now.
MARTINA: Do you even know the laws of your home country?
SIMON: Have you been breaking the laws profusely without knowing so,
and do you need to lawyer up now as a result?
Let us know in the comment section below
what you think about this.
MARTINA: Boy, we are just full of chipper topics, aren't we?
SIMON: Well, no this was, like,
a big topic in Korea.
It's like all over the New York Times, as well.
So we figured, like, people have asked us about it so we wanted to talk about it.
MARTINA: No, they definitely have.
So for our last TL;DR we talked about seven travel tips to South Korea
and we got lots of tips from you guys about visiting
your home countries but we wanted to clear up a couple of questions
that were coming up a lot.
KiraUKissable said,
wait a sec, if there's no Google Maps in Korea,
what do they use to get around for directions?
SIMON: And the answer for that is Daum and Naver,
which are pretty much Korea's versions of search engines.
Think of it like Korean Google.
They have their own, you could say, Naver Maps like Google Maps.
And they have a lot more access, and a lot more up-to-date information.
MARTINA: Yeah, so that's one of the things that we forgot to mention
is that you can totally -- you can use Google Maps in Korea.
But the last time they updated the images,
we just checked it,
...2009.
SIMON: Yeah, so if you try to look at our street and our studio,
the pictures from 2009, the building beside us
isn't even built yet.
Everything is completely outdated on those pictures.
MARTINA: Yeah, so you can use Google Maps in Korea if you just
need, like, a subway station but like --
SIMON: If you want to see if a road exists, then you can see the road exists.
Everything outside of the road is totally different.
MARTINA: Yeah, and that's because they are legally not allowed
to update the maps anymore because of Korean laws.
Longwinded but --
SIMON: Korean companies like Daum and Naver are allowed to.
Google is not allowed to.
MARTINA: Yeah, so they were updating for a while, and then it was just like,
no more updates.
So hope that explains that.
SIMON: On the other hand, Arturo Stojanoff wound up asking,
"Why are buses more adventurous in Seoul?"
MARTINA: And he was wondering if it's like, are they dangerous?
Like, I used to take buses to kind of, like, get to know a city?
SIMON: Yeah.
MARTINA: No, no, no. Totally not dangerous.
SIMON: -- well.
MARTINA: You mean the driving is crazy.
SIMON: The driving is pretty nuts.
They will run through red lights.
They will not wait for you to fully get on the bus before they flirt.
So it's a little bit --
MARTINA: It's not "fun-dangerous."
SIMON: No, it's not like you're getting shot on a bus.
But you just might be really, really scared.
MARTINA: Yes, but that's not what he was asking.
SIMON: Okay, no, no.
MARTINA: It's just that we forgot that there are so many buses in Seoul.
Like, the public transportation system is so amazing that
you'll wait at a bus stop,
and there'll be, like, 45 buses, like, zooming
past every direction so "it's confusing" is what we mean by "adventurous" so --
SIMON: Yes.
MARTINA: And if you get on a wrong colored bus
you might end up in another, like, city.
Like a local city bus.
SIMON: While for us when we were in Toronto,
you wait at the bus stop for *the* bus that comes, like, every hour.
I'm not saying all of Toronto
but, like, there are some spots
like, especially in Etobicoke, close to your house.
Like, you gotta wait for this bus and it's going to come in tomorrow.
MARTINA: Gotta wait for that one bus!
SIMON: That one bus is comin'!
MARTINA: Yeah, while Korea is like,
boom, boom, boom, boom, boom!
There's so many buses!
So that's what we mean by "adventure."
That's it!
SIMON: Yeah!
MARTINA: It's over!
[ Shuuuup ]
It was raining rainism!