Posted on 06/07/2014 6:56:00 PM PDT by nickcarraway
A Chinese man is reportedly stuck in South Korea after his four-year-old son made some creative additions to his passport, leaving him unable to return home — though there is also suspicion that the clickbait story may be a hoax.
Photos posted by the man on Sina Weibo, China's version of Twitter, showed the passport page rendered nearly unrecognizable with what appears to be scribbles made using a black felt-tip pen. The man's eyes and mouth in the passport photo were given artificial enhancements along with extra facial hair all around the head. There were also what looked like additional animals, people and flowers.
Chen said the damage was done during a family trip to South Korea, resulting in him being stopped by immigration when he tried to board a flight back to China. This prompted him to seek advice on Sina Weibo from other netizens.
This dad "can't return to the country," he wrote in a May 16 post. "It is so depressing ... Solutions? Help?"
It is not clear whether the man had managed to return to China with a new passport, though it is assumed that his family has already returned home without him.
The story even caught the attention of the official Xinhua news agency, which said government officials are urging Chinese tourists to take care of their travel documents when abroad. "The picture on the passport is very important. If any damage is done to the face area of the picture you may fail to get through customs," Xinhua said.
However, there are now those who believe the whole story may be a hoax. Gaming blog Kotaku points out that a four-year-old does not draw that well and there is no smearing of the ink, which has a constant thickness that is suspiciously similar to Microsoft's Paint application. The drawing also appears to trail off the page to the far right of the passport.
Oh man, there is a four year old who is getting a whuppin’ tonight.
Anything thinking person would rather be in SK
Yeah, but thing is, that this is something a four year old would do, but it’s amusing that out of everything the kid could have scribbled on, he scribbled on a passport, which Daddy needs to end up getting back to his home country.
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