A cheating husband cannot divorce his wife, despite having a years-long affair, a South Korean court ruled yesterday, insisting that only the injured party in a marriage could initiate a legal separation.
Movie director Hong Sang-soo, 58, a Cannes Film Festival regular, filed for divorce in 2016, shortly after his relationship with actress Kim Min-hee became public.
However, Hong’s wife, whom he wed in 1985, refused to play along — leading to a drawn-out legal battle that has lasted for years.
The Seoul Family Court yesterday dismissed Hong’s petition and awarded costs against him.
South Korea remains a conservative society, where until 2015 anyone indulging in extramarital sex risked a two-year prison sentence.
Even after decriminalization, public disapproval of affairs remains strong.
Despite her successes on the silver screen, 37-year-old Kim — who won best actress at the Berlinale in 2017 — has failed to inspire warmth among the South Korean public.
Her portrayal of an out-of-work actress reeling from an affair with a married director in Hong’s 2017 film On the Beach at Night Alone appears to have been too close to real life for moviegoers.
The law against adultery was originally intended to safeguard the rights of women at a time when marriage offered them some of their only legal protections. Most had no independent income and divorce carried enormous social stigma.
Opponents of divorce laws have said that they breach individual freedoms and trap people in unhappy marriages.
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
COMPETITION: The US and Russia make up about 90 percent of the world stockpile and are adding new versions, while China’s nuclear force is steadily rising, SIPRI said Most of the world’s nuclear-armed states continued to modernize their arsenals last year, setting the stage for a new nuclear arms race, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said yesterday. Nuclear powers including the US and Russia — which account for about 90 percent of the world’s stockpile — had spent time last year “upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions,” researchers said. Since the end of the Cold War, old warheads have generally been dismantled quicker than new ones have been deployed, resulting in a decrease in the overall number of warheads. However, SIPRI said that the trend was likely
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Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is to visit Canada next week, his first since relations plummeted after the assassination of a Canadian Sikh separatist in Vancouver, triggering diplomatic expulsions and hitting trade. Analysts hope it is a step toward repairing ties that soured in 2023, after then-Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau pointed the finger at New Delhi’s involvement in murdering Hardeep Singh Nijjar, claims India furiously denied. An invitation extended by new Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to Modi to attend the G7 leaders summit in Canada offers a chance to “reset” relations, former Indian diplomat Harsh Vardhan Shringla said. “This is a
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