Appellate court criminalizes marital rape for first time

SEOUL, Sept. 25 (Yonhap) --- A local high court has ruled that forced sex with a spouse constitutes rape, becoming the nation's first appeals court to recognize marital rape, court records showed on Sunday.
The Seoul High Court said it has sentenced a 40-year-old man to two and a half years in prison suspended for three years for forcing his wife to have sex by threatening her with a lethal weapon.
The court said that married partners have the right to demand sexual relations from each other, but they don't have the right to forced sex particularly with the use of violence and threats.
The man, whose name was withheld by the court, was accused in April of forcing his wife to have sex with him by threatening her with more violence after stabbing her during a fight at their home. The husband was later sentenced to a five-year jail term by the lower court.
Spousal rape has not been judged as a crime in South Korea since the Supreme Court denied such a crime in the 1970s, except for a special case in which the marriage was in effect broken.
In a landmark ruling, the Busan District Court recognized rape between married partners for the first time in the country in 2009. But the conviction was later dismissed after the accused husband killed himself.