- A South Korean man was given a one-year suspended sentence for evading military service.
- He was found guilty of intentionally putting on weight to get out of a combat role.
- This is just the latest example of South Korean men going to extreme lengths to try to avoid serving.
A South Korean man was found guilty of evading military service by deliberately putting on weight.
A court in Seoul sentenced the 26-year-old man, whose name was not publicly disclosed, to a year in prison, suspended for two years, according to The Korea Herald.
He was convicted of violating the country’s Military Service Act, which requires all able-bodied men between the ages of 18 and 35 to serve at least 18 months.
While most South Korean men are expected to serve for at least a year and a half, shortly after finishing high school, the conscription law has a number of exceptions.
Certain K-Pop stars with governmental medals can defer their service under the so-called “BTS Law,” named after the popular band.
Additionally, exemptions may be granted to individuals who are deemed incapable of serving because of illness, or mental or physical inabilities, which can include those who are obese.
The Korea Herald reported that the defendant gained substantial weight by doubling his daily food intake and drinking large amounts of water immediately before his physical.
According to the newspaper, the man received a Grade 2 assessment at his initial physical examination in October 2017, which is the second-highest grade and would have qualified him to serve in combat.
But he received a Grade 4 assessment on his examination in June 2023, which disqualified him from a combat role, instead allowing him to serve in a non-combat position.
The Korea Herald said he weighed more than 16 stone in that examination. At about five feet and five inches tall, this made his BMI 35.8, making him clinically obese.
The incident is not an isolated one.
In a 2017 Military Service Statistics report published by the Military Manpower Administration, a South Korean government agency that facilitates conscription, 37% of the 59 draft-dodging cases detected that year involved the deliberate gaining or loss of weight.
This was the most common method in attempting to evade military service, with the second most common being faking a mental illness, with others falsely registering as disabled, and one internationally breaking a bone.
Last year, prosecutors sought a one-year prison sentence for a professional volleyball player on a charge of colluding with a military broker in an attempt to evade conscription by faking an epilepsy diagnosis.
That same year, South Korean prosecutors said they had indicted 137 people on charges of evading conscription or aiding such offenses, accusing them of working with local military brokers to fake disabilities.
In 2008, 10 young South Koreans were sentenced to six months in prison for paying a military broker to learn how to raise their blood pressure to flunk the physical assessment for conscription.
This involved not sleeping for several days before the exam, drinking lots of coffee, and chain smoking.
Meanwhile, earlier this year a former South Korean professional gamer was sentenced to a year in prison for pretending to have an IQ of 53, after prosecutors accused him of flunking a psychological test in order to be diagnosed with a mental disorder.
In this latest incident, a friend — who was sentenced to six months in prison for aiding and abetting — provided the man with specific plans on how to put on weight, according to The Korea Herald.
The friend denied the charges, saying he didn’t think the defendant would go through with it.
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