Share price of South Korea's biggest condom maker surged on Thursday after the country's highest court struck down a decades-old law banning adultery, media reports said.

Shares of Unidus Corp, which makes latex products including condoms, soared to the 15 per cent daily limit gain after the ruling.

The South Korean law had been enacted in 1953 to protect women in a male-dominated society where divorce was rare and had made marital infidelity punishable by jail.

"The law is unconstitutional as it infringes people's right to make their own decisions on sex and secrecy and freedom of their private life, violating the principle banning excessive enforcement under the constitution," Seo Ki Seok, a Constitutional Court justice, reading an opinion representing five justices.

The Constitutional Court of Korea is an independent and specialised court in South Korea, whose primary role is the reviewing of constitutionality under the Constitution of the Republic of Korea. It also has administrative law functions such as ruling on competence disputes between governmental entities, giving final decisions on impeachments, and making judgments on the dissolution of political parties.
(with inputs from Reuters)