Solomon’s 100th Choice

A salary man goes to a baseball game with a woman other than his wife of three years. The wife spots her husband on TV during the live broadcast and files for divorce. He sues the broadcasting station for televising his image without permission. Will he get the money?

SBS’s “Solomon’s Choice” (airing Saturdays at 6:50 p.m.), which takes a simple, layman’s approach to various legal questions by applying them to everyday situations, will air its 100th episode on June 26. The show debuted in July 2002, and has introduced some 460 items of legal information so far.

Each week, roughly 100 topics are gathered in the form of viewer write-ins on the internet and precedents found by a study group of law students at Seoul National University, as well as through the Korea Consumer Protection Board. The production staff of four, including attorney Ko Seung-deok, then adapts three or four out of this pool of cases through consultation with the “Solomon Legal Team.”

On the show, actors reenact the case, and civilian participants and a panel of entertainment-industry celebrities voice their respective opinions. Then, the “Solomon Legal Team” pronounces a “sentence” based on the law.

“Solomon’s Choice” deals with problems that could occur to anyone, anywhere: money problems such as the expiration date of bonds, or the question of whether the usage right for a building’s roof belongs to the building owner or the occupant of the roof-top tenement.

Among the issues treated on the show, viewers say the most helpful for practical purposes have been the ones about marital relations. One such issue: is it grounds for divorce if a husband objects to his wife’s wish to have her mother come and live with them, when the wife has taken care of his live-in mother till the latter’s passing? Among the non-experts, most women and a fair number of men blamed the husband, but the legal professionals ruled that his refusal did not constitute legitimate grounds for divorce. The reason? The wife’s mother was financially independent, and “taking care of” a parent did not necessarily mean “living with” him or her.

Producer An Beom-jin remarked, “That was a good example of a case where the official legal interpretation did not coincide with the general public’s instincts about the law—which is the kind of conflict that makes this show interesting.”

“In 30 years of hosting TV shows, this is turning out to be the most difficult,” said Lim Sung-hoon, who hosts “Solomon’s Choice,” “because I have to mediate between the objective opinion of the legal experts and the subjective views of the celebrity panel.”

For the special 100th episode airing June 26, Lim will star in a reenactment for the first time. He plays a forty-something husband and father who is defrauded of 10 million won after quitting his job to pursue his lifelong dream of becoming a singer. Decked out in Elvis Presley-esque duds, Lim will belt out the King’s hit song, “Burning Love.” Even the “Solomon Legal Team,” along with the celebrity panel manned by actress Keum Bo-ra, comedian Pyo In-bong, and others, will give their hands at reenactment.

Katherine Cho kathycho@donga.com