Short answer. Yes, a spouse can sue you personally, and these claims are common in Korea. But you are not automatically liable. The claim is an ordinary tort claim under Article 750 of the Civil Act, and the spouse bringing it has to prove that you knew the person was married, or were negligent in not knowing. Where that cannot be proved, the claim fails without the court even reaching the amount. Separately, conduct after the marriage has already irretrievably broken down is generally not treated as a tort at all.
What Korean law says
Article 750: a person who causes loss to another by an unlawful act, intentionally or negligently, is liable to compensate that loss. Article 751(1) extends that to loss other than property, including mental suffering, which is the basis on which consolation money is awarded.
Article 766(1): a claim for damages in tort extinguishes if it is not exercised within three years from the day the injured party became aware of both the loss and the person who caused it. Article 766(2): the same applies once ten years have passed from the day the unlawful act was committed.
Civil Act, Articles 750, 751 and 766. Act No. 21454, in force from 17 March 2026.
What Korean courts have actually done
The decisive issue is usually knowledge, and the burden sits with the spouse who is suing.
In a Jeju District Court judgment of 4 July 2025 (2024GaDan57851) the defendant was a foreign national who had met the plaintiff’s husband on a dating app and dated him for about a month. The husband had described himself as divorced and referred to the plaintiff as his former wife throughout their messages, including in messages to his own friends. The court held that the burden of proving the third party knew of the marriage, or was negligent in not knowing, lies with the plaintiff, found that burden unmet, and dismissed the claim in full without reaching the question of amount. The plaintiff had claimed 31,000,000 KRW and recovered nothing.
A Suwon District Court Yeoju Branch judgment of 12 February 2026 (2025GaDan11614) shows the second defence. The couple had separated in January 2023 with no attempt at reconciliation. The court found the marriage objectively beyond repair by the relevant period, so conduct after that point was not an unlawful act, and dismissed an additional claim of 100,000,000 KRW.
The defences have limits. In a Busan District Court appeal of 16 July 2025 (2025Na42209), upheld by the Supreme Court (2025Da215575), the breakdown defence failed because the burden of proving breakdown falls on the third party, and evidence of continued family life — family trips, birthdays, memorial rites, caring for the mother-in-law — defeated it. Damages of 20,000,000 KRW were upheld. In an Uijeongbu District Court judgment of 23 April 2026 (2025GaDan104461), a defendant who continued the relationship after being discovered and asked to stop was ordered to pay 25,000,000 KRW and to bear the litigation costs.
What usually happens in practice
For a foreign resident the realistic risk is not that the law is unfair but that the evidence is thin on your side. What protected the defendant in the Jeju case was the messages themselves: the married person’s own words describing himself as divorced. Those messages existed because nobody deleted them.
Awards in these cases have typically run in the tens of millions of won rather than the sums people fear, and the two things that push an award up are continuing after being discovered and the length of the relationship.
The three-year period in Article 766(1) runs from when the spouse learned of both the loss and who caused it, not from when the relationship happened.
What you should do next
- Stop the relationship on learning of the marriage, and keep the message showing when you learned.
- Preserve every message, especially anything where the person described their own marital status. Do not delete.
- Do not contact the spouse directly to explain. Answer through a lawyer.
- If there was long separation before you met, gather what shows it. That is a separate defence with its own burden.
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Written and reviewed by Soobin You, Attorney at YUSU Lawfirm. Former prosecutor. Last legal review: 12 September 2026.