You might have seen the image above flooding your social media account’s news feeds, garnering different reactions from users. The photo shows the passport of a Chinese man stuck in South Korea after his son scribbled drawings on to his travel document. The news has been trending all over social media but recent reports said that the viral story might be another hoax.

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The man posted the photo of his passport having all sorts of drawings from his four year old son on Weibo, China’s Twitter clone. The image showed that the front page of his travel document was nearly unrecognizable after drawings were done using a black felt-tipped pen. Furthermore, the man’s face was given by his son some “creative additions” with animals, people and flowers drawn all over the page.

The man who posted the photo was identified with the surname Chen. He said that the damage to his passport was done during their South Korean vacation. Chen said that immigration officials stopped him from boarding the plane back to China upon seeing his distorted passport. This prompted him to post the photo on Weibo and asked netizens for their advice.

On his post dated May 16, Chen wrote a caption to his photo which read: “This dad "can't return to the country," he wrote in a May 16 post. It is so depressing ... Solutions? Help?"

No further reports were made if Chen managed to go back to China by obtaining a new passport although it was assumed that his family flew back to the country leaving him behind.

The story which was reported last month caught the attention of China-backed news agency Xinhua who even told Chinese travelers to secure their documents when on trips. Xinhua said that if the picture on the passport has been damaged, a Chinese tourist may hurdle difficulties passing customs officials.

On the other hand, the story which had gone viral over the web has now been identified a hoax by some web portals. Kotaku, a gaming blog, said that four year old child could not possible draw that well. It also said that ink was not smeared on the page considering the type of pen used.

Kotaku also pointed out that the thickness of the drawing kind of resembles the Paint application from Microsoft.

TagsChen, Chinese tourist, defaced passport, hoax story, Kotaku, Xinhua