'Schizophrenic' draft-dodger gets caught by IQ test score

South Korean males salute the national flag before their military enlistment at 102 Replacement Depot in Chuncheon, Gangwon Province. / Yonhap

By Rha Hae-sung

Busan NamBu Police Station arrested a man Tuesday on charges of draft-dodging by pretending to suffer schizophrenia.

Under South Korean law, any attempt to avoid the military draft is subject to a maximum five years in prison.

The man, 31, whose name was withheld, allegedly faked he is a schizophrenia patient at a mental hospital in Busan. In his diagnosis paper, his intelligence score was recorded at 53. But it turned out he had been working as a journalist and a salesman at a foreign car company.

He was caught when he attempted to regain his driver’s license. In acquiring the license, he unwittingly scored 114 on an IQ test. Police became suspicious when they compared it with what he scored at the hospital.

“He studied schizophrenia deeply and acted it out so well that even professional doctors believed that he was mentally ill,” a police official said.

During the police investigation, the man first denied the charge. To explain the IQ test score, he said he had “fully recovered from the mental disorder” when he wrote the test. But he later turned himself in.

He admitted he studied the symptoms of the illness from a patient he met at a church to evade military service.