I am an administrative agent (행정사 — a licensed specialist who prepares administrative filings and permits on behalf of clients) with an office in Songdo, Yeonsu-gu, Incheon. Here is one episode I came across in my work.
On the day he was notified of his enlistment date, the young man said, he wrote that date on his calendar himself for the first time.
A year and a half earlier, the same word had been written on that calendar three times: re-exam.
Two of those three may not have been necessary. It was not because his health was any different. It was because, each time, the paperwork showing his condition fell short.
A Word Written Three Times on the Calendar
The first contact came from his mother. It was an email with two attachments: photos of the notice of his military service examination result and the guidance letter for a physical re-examination.
The message itself was short. Her son had received Grade 7 again, and if it happened once more, he would not be able to extend his leave of absence from school any further.
Looking at the notice, this was his second Grade 7. After receiving Grade 7 at his first examination, he had gone for a physical re-examination, and that re-exam had again resulted in Grade 7. A third re-exam had been scheduled for two months later.
The son was twenty-two and on leave after finishing his third year of university. His permitted leave period was nearly used up. Until the military service question was settled, he could not plan to return to school, to enlist, or anything in between.
He told me his selection as an exchange student had also been put on hold once. He had been selected, but because his military service status was not finalized, he could not set a departure date. He had been working part-time, but only short-term, since he could not commit to a long contract.
What he wanted was not a particular grade. At our first consultation, he put it this way: he just wanted a conclusion, whichever way it went.
Those words set the direction of this case.
The first consultation took place on the afternoon of the scheduled day. The mother and son came together. As we began, I settled one thing first: the person at the center of this matter was the son.
The mother's worry was great, and she asked most of the questions. But a military service determination concerns the individual, and the person who stands before the examiners is the individual. On the day of the re-exam, it is also he who answers the examining doctor's questions. So from the middle of the consultation on, I put my questions directly to the son. When his symptoms first appeared, which hospitals he visited and in what order, how he was now.
At first he answered briefly. From the second question, his answers grew a little longer. And at the third question, the name of a clinic came up that even his mother had not known about. It was a place he had visited briefly while living in the university dormitory.
Had I not asked him directly, that clinic would have been left out of the file.
What a Grade 7 Determination Means
Physical grades in the military service examination run from Grade 1 to Grade 7. Roughly speaking, Grades 1 to 3 mean active duty, Grade 4 supplementary service, Grade 5 wartime labor service, and Grade 6 exemption from military service.
Grade 7 is a little different. Grade 7 is a state in which no determination has been made either way. It is the grade given when, because of an illness or the course of treatment, a determination is considered difficult at the present time, and the person is required to be examined again after a certain period.
In other words, Grade 7 is not a result but a deferral. And when deferrals repeat, a person's time stands still.
The reason he had received Grade 7 twice was written briefly on the notice. The gist was that the course of treatment needed to be confirmed. I read it to mean that the examining doctor did not have enough material to assess his current condition.
At this point I made one thing clear. It is the examining doctor at the Military Manpower Administration who determines the physical grade. An administrative agent does not make medical judgments. What we can do goes only as far as helping ensure that the materials needed for the determination are prepared completely and in an order that is easy to read.
I explained that boundary on the first day. The mother looked a little disappointed; the son, on the contrary, nodded.
That same day we settled one more thing: how the medical records would be handled.
Medical records are sensitive information. They contain diagnoses, treatment details, and test values. So we agreed that he would keep the originals, and our office would receive only the copies needed for organizing. The copies would be used only for this matter and, once it was over, would be returned to him or destroyed. I wrote this on a single sheet and had him sign it.
It may look like a formality, but there is a reason. A person preparing materials for a military service determination is usually laying out his medical history to someone for the first time. If you first make clear where and how those records will remain, the conversation that follows becomes much easier.
Indeed, after signing that sheet, the son showed me the photos of his medicine packets on his phone without hesitation.
After Going Twice on His Own
He had already been to two re-exams. Both times he had prepared on his own.
For the first re-exam, he took a single medical certificate from a neighborhood clinic. It was one page with a diagnosis and a date. The examining doctor asked whether he had any materials showing the course of treatment, and he answered that he did not. The result was Grade 7 again.
For the second re-exam, he prepared a little more. He obtained a medical opinion from a university hospital. But that opinion covered only a single recent visit. It did not include when the condition began, the treatment in between, or how his test results had changed. The result was Grade 7 once again.
Both times he brought documents. But both times, they were not documents that answered the questions the determination required.
What the examining doctor wants to know usually comes down to three things. Since when, and in what condition? What treatment has been received in the meantime? What is the condition now, and how is it expected to develop? A single medical certificate answers only part of the first question.
Two months remained until the third re-exam.
Two months looks like plenty. But working backward, it was not.
The earliest outpatient appointment at the university hospital was three weeks away. To obtain a medical opinion, he had to go through that visit. Some hospitals issued test result reports on the day of the visit; others took several days after a request. The specialist clinic asked for a week to write its opinion.
So we wrote the dates backward from the re-exam. All documents received one week before the re-exam. Medical opinion requested two weeks before that. The university hospital outpatient visit before that. And there were two things to do right away: book the university hospital appointment, and request copies of medical records from the neighborhood clinic and the specialist clinic.
That evening the son booked the university hospital appointment. Four new dates went onto the calendar. This time it was not a calendar with only the word "re-exam" on it.
It Was Already Written in the Guidance Letter
The very first thing we did at the first consultation was reread the physical re-examination guidance letter.
The letter listed the documents to bring to the re-exam. Along with an explanation that the required materials differ depending on the illness, it said to prepare medical records, test result reports, and the like. He had received this letter twice, and both times he had looked only at the date and location at the top.
This is not unusual. Administrative notices usually put the schedule on the first line, and the important items to prepare are in small print further down. The moment people confirm the schedule, they think they have read the whole notice.
The next thing we did was organize the questions to ask the Military Manpower Administration. What kinds of materials are needed for the determination in relation to his illness, whether originals are required or copies are acceptable, and whether there is a standard for the date of issue. The materials required can differ by illness, and the proper order is to confirm those standards rather than guess at them.
He made the call himself. When the person concerned confirms things directly, the answers are more accurate, and the next time a similar question arises, he can handle it on his own. I wrote the list of questions on one sheet for him, and he noted down the answers beside them as he talked.
The call took fifteen minutes. In those fifteen minutes, the outline of the documents to prepare took shape.
There was one more question on the call list: whether the re-exam date could be postponed. It was a question in case document preparation became too tight.
The answer was that it might be possible depending on the reason. But we decided not to postpone. His goal was a conclusion, and postponing the date would delay the conclusion by just as much. We kept a change of schedule as a last card, to be used only if the documents simply could not be ready in time.
Knowing an option and choosing not to use it is different from not being able to use it because you did not know. When you know, you do not panic even if the schedule gets tight.
Putting the Medical Records in a Single Line
What came next took the longest: gathering the medical records and putting them in a single line.
He had been to three medical institutions: the neighborhood clinic he visited when symptoms first appeared, the university hospital where he had detailed tests, and the specialist clinic where he had received steady treatment since. Only by combining the records from all three could one see the whole course from onset to the present.
First I made a table on a single A4 sheet. It had four columns: date, medical institution, visit or test details, and the name of the document to be issued for that record. We filled in the dates using his memory, the appointment text messages on his phone, and photos of his medicine packets.
This table served as the request form for issuance. At each hospital, he could simply ask for a copy of the medical record for this date and the test result report for this date. If you vaguely ask for all of your records, the hospital is at a loss, and you end up carrying home hundreds of pages.
Copies of medical records often have to be requested by the patient in person. So he made the hospital visits. In return, I planned his route, down to which hospitals to visit in which order so he could cover two in a single day.
Once the records were gathered, his course of treatment could be seen as a single flow for the first time: onset, testing, start of treatment, two medication adjustments, recent condition. And one thing came to light. The test results he had received after the second re-exam showed his most recent condition best of all.
That test result report had been in his desk drawer. He said he had received it but never thought to bring it to the re-exam.
There were snags while gathering the records. The clinic he had visited during his dormitory days had since changed its computer system, and said issuing old records would take longer.
In cases like this, if you just wait, the schedule falls apart. So we first pinned down the visit dates. Looking up one's national health insurance treatment history shows when and which medical institutions were used. Using that, we confirmed the dates of his visits during the dormitory period and asked the clinic only for the records from those specific dates. Once the scope was narrowed, issuance was done in three days.
Document names also differed from hospital to hospital. One called it a copy of medical records, another a treatment progress record, and yet another first recommended a certificate of medical treatment. Different names can mean different contents. So I had him ask each hospital, before issuance, what the document would contain: whether it would include dates and treatment details, and whether it would include test values.
He never had to get the same record issued twice. That one check saved two or three hospital visits.
The Words Used to Request a Medical Opinion
With the medical records gathered, one last thing was needed: a medical opinion from the doctor currently in charge of his treatment.
There is a common mistake here. The patient asks the doctor, "Please write it favorably for military service purposes." We do not make such requests. A doctor simply writes the facts, and an opinion that departs from the facts is a problem in itself. Above all, such a request undermines the credibility of the determination.
What is necessary, however, is to convey precisely what is needed. So I summed up in two lines what he would say in the consulting room: that he needed a medical opinion to submit for a military service physical re-examination, and that he had been advised it would help the determination if it included when the condition began, the course of treatment so far, his current condition, and the future treatment plan.
How the contents are written is up to the doctor. What we did went only as far as passing on a list of the items that should be included in the opinion.
The doctor reportedly looked at the list and nodded, saying that last time he had simply been asked for an opinion with no such explanation, so he had written only about the most recent visit.
That was why the opinion he took to the second re-exam had been so short. The doctor had not known what to write.
Why We Did Not Inflate Anything
While we were organizing the materials, the mother asked once whether it might help to include records of a hospital visit he had made some time ago for a different symptom.
We did not include them. Mixing in records unrelated to the condition under determination makes the reader lose the thread. And attaching several pages of unrelated records can, regardless of intent, be read as an attempt to exaggerate one's condition.
This is especially true of materials for a military service determination. The determination is based on the actual condition, and materials that are untrue or exaggerated not only cost the determination its credibility but can become a separate problem in themselves. What we aimed for was not a favorable determination but an accurate one.
That was what he wanted, too: a conclusion, either way. Accurate materials bring a conclusion sooner. Insufficient materials invite deferral, and inflated materials invite suspicion. Both delay the conclusion.
So the file had one principle: only records concerning the condition under determination, in chronological order, with nothing missing.
After that day's consultation, the mother quietly asked one more thing: what if he got Grade 7 again this time?
That question could not be answered with documents, because the determination is not ours to make. Instead I told her this: this file had been built to answer every question the examining doctor needs answered to make a judgment. And if a deferral still came, we could look at the reason stated in the result, see what had been missing, and set the order again.
Anxiety usually grows when you do not know the next step. Just knowing that there is a next step puts people a little more at ease. That day, for the first time, the mother rose from her seat before her son.
The Bundle of Documents on Re-exam Day
The day before the re-exam, we finalized the file.
At the very front we attached a one-page summary: when the condition began, the treatment period at each medical institution, the date of the most recent tests, and a list of attached documents. Below the summary we assigned attachment numbers. The summary contained no diagnoses or judgments. It listed only dates, institutions, and document names.
Behind it, in chronological order, we placed the copies of medical records, the test result reports, and the medical opinion. We separated documents that required originals from those for which copies were enough, and put the originals in a separate envelope, so that they could be returned to him after being checked at the counter.
And I asked one thing of him: when the examining doctor asked questions, he should answer from memory without looking at the documents. The documents support memory; they do not replace it. To keep his answers from diverging from the documents, he only needed to read them several times beforehand.
He said he read the one-page summary three times that night.
On the morning of the re-exam, he reportedly arrived thirty minutes before his scheduled time. There were several people around his age in the waiting room. Some carried document envelopes; some were empty-handed.
He said the examining doctor leafed through the file from the front. The doctor paused briefly on the one-page summary, turned the next few pages quickly, and paused again at the most recent test result report. Then the doctor asked two things: why his medication had recently been changed, and what difficulties he currently had in daily life.
Both were questions whose answers were in the file. He answered without looking at the documents, thanks to having read them three times the night before.
At the determination, documents do not speak for you. But they keep your words from wavering.
The re-exam was in the morning. In the afternoon a text arrived: they had accepted all the documents, and this time it had felt somehow different.
The Paths When You Disagree With a Determination
We did not use it in this case, but during a consultation he asked something: what could he do if, this time too, the result was not one he could accept?
I explained that there were two paths. One is to seek a new determination or a change to the disposition within the procedures set by the Military Service Act and its subordinate regulations (병역법령). The procedures available and their deadlines vary depending on the reason and timing, so whether one applies must first be confirmed with the competent regional Military Manpower Administration office.
The other is to treat the military service disposition itself as an administrative disposition and contest it. The filing period set by the Administrative Appeals Act (「행정심판법」) is within ninety days from the date one became aware of the disposition. Miss the deadline, and the chance to contest disappears altogether.
Both paths have something in common. The clock starts running from the day you receive the result notice. And on either path, the file built this time becomes the starting point as it is.
Hearing that explanation, he said that when he received a notice, he would write down the date first. This time, there was no need.
A Student ID in a Box of Drinks
There was one small commotion in this matter.
In the week before the re-exam, he left a box of drinks at the office. I told him it was not necessary, but he insisted on leaving it.
The next morning he called. He had lost his student ID and asked whether it might be at the office. We looked and could not find it. That afternoon, while opening the box of drinks, we found it. The student ID was wedged at the very top of the box, between the plastic wrapping.
It seemed he had set the ID on top while carrying the box and then taped it up just like that. He came that evening to collect it, took out one of the drinks, drank it, and left.
After that, next to the one-page summary at the front of the file, I wrote one line in ballpoint pen for him: bring your ID. If you leave your ID behind on re-exam day, no matter how perfect the documents are, it is of no use.
The Result
At the third re-exam, his grade was finalized. It was a final determination, not Grade 7. I will not state the specific grade. The determination is made by the Military Manpower Administration according to an individual's state of health, and the grade itself is not the point of this story.
The point is that the deferral ended. After the word "re-exam," written three times over a year and a half, a different word was written for the first time.
Following the determination, he checked his service schedule and received his enlistment date before his leave of absence ran out. He reportedly decided to apply again as an exchange student after completing his service, and said he had already looked up the selection criteria.
The whole process took about two and a half months from the first email: a month and a half for document preparation, and the rest was waiting for the re-exam.
One thing is worth recording. The most decisive document among those he brought to this re-exam was not one newly created. It was the test result report he had received after the second re-exam and put away in his drawer. The necessary material already existed. It had simply never arrived at the place of determination.
In administrative procedures, deferrals usually arise not because something is missing, but because something is not in its proper place.
In our last call, he said something: whatever the result, he could have accepted it this time, because he had done everything he could.
In administrative procedures, it is the time in between, more than the result, that wears people down. Bringing that time to an end is the most substantive part of this work.
A Few Things to Leave With You
If you have a physical re-examination coming up, consider setting the order like this.
① Read the section on what to bring in the guidance letter first. The documents to bring, listed below the schedule, decide the determination. The required materials differ by illness, so it is more accurate to confirm directly with the competent Military Manpower Administration office.
② Put your medical records in a single line from onset to the present. If you make a table of date, medical institution, visit details, and name of the document to be issued, that table itself becomes your request form for each hospital.
③ Tell your doctor which items the medical opinion should include. When the condition began, the course of treatment, current condition, and future plan. The doctor writes the contents truthfully. Do not ask for it to be written favorably.
④ Do not include unrelated records. They blur the flow and can be read as exaggeration. Only records concerning the condition under determination, in chronological order.
⑤ When you receive a notice, write down the date first. The procedures for disagreeing with a determination and the filing period for an administrative appeal all start from the notice.
The requirements and deadlines for military service physical grades, physical re-examinations, and objection procedures vary depending on the reason and timing, and change from time to time. Because requirements differ case by case, individual confirmation with the competent regional Military Manpower Administration office is necessary.
This case is a fictional story reconstructed to aid understanding; the people, business names, place names, and figures that appear in it are unrelated to any specific individual or incident.
