Suspecting Infidelity Does Not Justify a Hidden Recorder: Husband Gets Suspended Sentence for Wiretapping Wife’s Car
A man in his thirties who installed a recording device in his wife’s car to capture evidence of a suspected affair has been convicted under the Protection of Communications Secrets Act and sentenced to eight months in prison, suspended for two years. Here are the key points.
Facts
- In January 2025, A installed a hidden recording device in his wife’s car and recorded her telephone conversations, suspecting she was having an affair.
- A subsequently submitted transcripts of the recordings — specifically conversations with a man he suspected was his wife’s affair partner — as evidence in divorce proceedings.
- A was charged with violating the Protection of Communications Secrets Act.
Court Decision
- Changwon District Court (Criminal Division 2, Judge Kim Seong-hwan) convicted A and sentenced him to eight months in prison, suspended for two years, along with one year of civil rights suspension.
- The court found that regardless of A’s motivation, secretly recording another person’s telephone conversations constitutes a criminal violation of the constitutionally protected rights to privacy and communications secrecy — and that the offense was not minor.
Key Takeaways
- Secretly recording a spouse’s phone conversations by installing a device in their vehicle is a criminal offense under the Protection of Communications Secrets Act, regardless of the reason for doing so.
- Suspicion of infidelity — however well-founded — does not create a legal exception to the prohibition on covert recording of private communications.
- Submitting the resulting recordings as evidence in civil divorce proceedings constitutes the disclosure element of the offense and does not sanitize the underlying illegal conduct.
- This case follows a consistent line of Korean court decisions confirming that spousal surveillance through covert recording is criminal — and that the civil evidentiary value the recorder hoped to gain does not mitigate the offense.
Why This Matters
This ruling is a concise but important reminder that the prohibition on covert recording is absolute in Korea — it applies between spouses, during marital disputes, and regardless of what the recorded person may have been doing. As summarized in an earlier post on this blog, Korean courts do conduct a balancing test when deciding whether illegally obtained recordings can be used in civil proceedings — but that civil evidentiary question is entirely separate from, and does not affect, the criminal liability of the person who made the recording. Anyone considering covert surveillance of a spouse should understand clearly: the act of recording is itself a crime, and submitting the recording in court adds the element of unlawful disclosure.
Article: https://www.donga.com/news/NewsStand/article/all/20260926/134733829/1
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