South Korea

You had so many women and men who had lost families ... tens of thousands that had fled from the northern part [of Korea], who had left their families behind ... or lost them in the frenzy and chaos of the refugee flow [after the Korean War]. In that sense, [the adultery law] was an attempt to create order and stability, and, especially for those marrying for the first time, to set a certain standard.

For many of the elite and the wealthy [men in South Korea], they were able since 1953 to maintain multiple women and have regular affairs without any kind of social stigma from male society, and for the most part women of the older generation kind of just took it as part of their fate.

Domestic violence is a massive and mostly overlooked problem [in South Korea], and immigrant women have recently been arriving in the country as brides, mainly to be used as child producers. These women have very little access to [the] Korean language, they come from relatively poor backgrounds ... their husbands sometimes divorce them without the women even knowing what’s going on.