Husband who pestered wife for divorce was having affair with his store employee

A woman pressured into divorce by her husband shortly after their wedding has discovered the real reason behind his demands: he had been having an affair. She learned the truth while already in the middle of mutual divorce proceedings — raising the question of what legal options remain available to her.

The case of a woman identified as A was featured Thursday on YTN Radio's legal advice program "Jo In-seop's Counseling Center."

A and her husband met as new hires at a food company and married after dating. After leaving the company, the husband opened a tteokbokki franchise, and the couple had a child together.

But almost immediately after the birth, the husband began pushing relentlessly for a divorce, complaining that married life felt suffocating and that the two were incompatible.

A pleaded with him in tears, thinking of their child, but after a year of unrelenting pressure she ultimately filed for a mutual divorce and moved back to her parents' home with the child.

Not long after, a neighbor told A that the husband had been seen entering their apartment with a young woman, shopping bags in hand, and that the woman had even left with him for work in the morning.

A went to the apartment management office to check the CCTV footage — and received an even greater shock.

The woman in the footage was a part-time employee at the husband's store.

The employee had known that A, who had helped out at the store, was the wife. The two had been carrying on a relationship behind A's back, and it was that affair that had driven the husband to push for the divorce.

Furious, A moved to secure evidence, but the management office refused, citing personal data protection rules and saying it could not hand over CCTV footage at its own discretion.

Attorney Shin Jin-hee of law firm Shinsegae said, "If you file a motion for evidence preservation with the court, and the court finds sufficient grounds, it can order the management office — as the holder of the footage — to submit the material."

However, she said swift action is critical, given that CCTV footage is typically retained for only a short period and that a court ruling can take several days.

Shin advised that the motion should be accompanied by a firm request to the management office: "Please inform them that you have filed a motion for evidence preservation with the court and ask them not to delete the footage until a decision is issued."

She particularly stressed that the husband could claim he began seeing the other woman only after filing for the mutual divorce — that is, after the marriage had already broken down — making it essential to secure evidence predating the divorce filing in order to prove that the affair caused the breakdown.

Shin said it is advisable to obtain records such as messages, call logs and KakaoTalk chat histories between the spouse and the other party through a court fact-finding inquiry, adding, "You first need to gather at least some supporting material that gives reasonable grounds to suspect an affair — such as witness accounts from acquaintances or a written acknowledgment."