Diabetes and prediabetes risk
Korean Diabetes Risk Score
A six-question score built from South Korea's national health surveys to spot adults who may have diabetes without knowing it. No blood test and no BMI needed. You get your score out of 11, whether it reaches the cut point of 5, and the points behind it.
Your answers
Based on the Korean diabetes screening score, in our own words. Nothing you enter leaves this page.
Measure after breathing out, between your lowest rib and the top of your hip bone, usually at the navel.
What you will see
Your Korean diabetes screening score out of 11, whether it reaches the cut point of 5 and the points behind it.
Educational only, not medical advice. A risk score, not a diagnosis.
Source
Lee YH et al., Diabetes Care 2012 (open access): points from Table 2 of the paper, the maximum of 11 and the cut point of 5.
Validated in
Built in 9,602 adults aged 20 and older without known diabetes from the Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (KNHANES) 2001 and 2005. Checked in a separate group of 8,391 adults from KNHANES 2007 to 2008. Diabetes was found with a fasting blood sugar test during the survey.
Limits
The score looks for diabetes you may already have; it does not diagnose and it does not predict future diabetes. It was built and checked only in South Korean survey data, so it may fit other groups less well. The surveys had no glucose tolerance test, so some diabetes was likely missed. At the cut point of 5 it flags about half of all adults. People already diagnosed with diabetes should not use it.
Korean score, Chinese score, IDRS or the US test?
All of these ask about age, body size and family history, but they were built in different places. The Korean score comes from South Korea's national health surveys and adds high blood pressure, smoking and alcohol, with no BMI (Lee 2012). The Chinese Diabetes Risk Score uses BMI and systolic blood pressure (Zhou 2013), and the Indian Diabetes Risk Score was built in Chennai, India (Mohan 2005). The FINDRISC calculator comes from Finland and predicts diabetes over 10 years (Lindström 2003), and the US type 2 diabetes risk test was built in US survey data (Bang 2009). Pick the one built closest to where you live and who you are. In the Korean data, the Korean score did better than the scores from the US, China, Thailand and the Netherlands that the authors compared it with (Lee 2012).
The points
| Factor | Answer | Points |
|---|---|---|
| Age | Under 35 / 35 to 44 / 45 or older | 0 / 2 / 3 |
| Diabetes in a parent, brother or sister | No / yes | 0 / 1 |
| High blood pressure | No / yes | 0 / 1 |
| Waist, men | Under 84 cm / 84 to 89.9 / 90 or more | 0 / 2 / 3 |
| Waist, women | Under 77 cm / 77 to 83.9 / 84 or more | 0 / 2 / 3 |
| Smoking | Never or former / current | 0 / 1 |
| Alcohol, drinks a day | Under 1 / 1 to 4.9 / 5 or more | 0 / 1 / 2 |
Points from Table 2 of the paper, which turned the weights from the authors' statistical model into whole points with a maximum of 11 (Lee 2012). In the study, family history meant diabetes in a parent or sibling, and high blood pressure meant a doctor's diagnosis, blood pressure medicine or a reading of 140/90 mmHg or higher. One drink held about 8 to 9 g of alcohol, whatever the type (Lee 2012). One inch is 2.54 cm.
Example: a 50-year-old woman with a waist of 80 cm and none of the other factors scores 3 (age) + 2 (waist) = 5, at the cut point.
What the score means
The authors chose 5 as the cut point because it best balanced finding people with diabetes against flagging people without it. In the surveys the score was built from, a score of 5 or more picked up 81% of adults with undiagnosed diabetes, and 54% of those without diabetes scored under 5. In the separate 2007 to 2008 survey the figures were 80% and 53% (Lee 2012). About 47% of adults scored 5 or more, and only about 4% to 6% of them turned out to have diabetes (Lee 2012).
On average, about 2% of adults with a score of 4 or less had undiagnosed diabetes, against 6% at 5 to 7, 12% at 8 or 9, and 19% at 10 or more (Lee 2012). The score told people with and without diabetes apart with an area under the curve of 0.73 in both the building and the checking data (Lee 2012).
What to do with your result
A score of 5 or more is a reason to ask your doctor about a blood sugar test such as an A1C, a fasting glucose or a glucose tolerance test. A score under 5 does not rule diabetes out. In the US, the US Preventive Services Task Force recommends screening for prediabetes and type 2 diabetes in adults aged 35 to 70 who have overweight or obesity (USPSTF 2021), whatever any risk score says.
See also the Japanese diabetes risk score (3-year risk), the Peruvian diabetes risk score, the Chinese Diabetes Risk Score, the Indian Diabetes Risk Score, the FINDRISC calculator, the Leicester diabetes risk score, the type 2 diabetes risk test, when to get tested for diabetes, prediabetes ranges and next steps and the waist circumference check.
Sources
- Lee YH, Bang H, Kim HC, Kim HM, Park SW, Kim DJ. A simple screening score for diabetes for the Korean population: development, validation, and comparison with other scores. Diabetes Care. 2012;35(8):1723-1730. doi:10.2337/dc11-2347. PMID 22688547. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3402268/
- US Preventive Services Task Force. Screening for Prediabetes and Type 2 Diabetes: Recommendation Statement. JAMA. 2021;326(8):736-743. www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/uspstf/recommendation/screening-for-prediabetes-and-type-2-diabetes
- Zhou X, Qiao Q, Ji L, et al. Nonlaboratory-based risk assessment algorithm for undiagnosed type 2 diabetes developed on a nation-wide diabetes survey. Diabetes Care. 2013;36(12):3944-3952. doi:10.2337/dc13-0593. PMID 24144651. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3836161/
- Mohan V, Deepa R, Deepa M, Somannavar S, Datta M. A simplified Indian Diabetes Risk Score for screening for undiagnosed diabetic subjects. J Assoc Physicians India. 2005;53:759-763. PMID 16334618. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16334618/
- Lindström J, Tuomilehto J. The diabetes risk score: a practical tool to predict type 2 diabetes risk. Diabetes Care. 2003;26(3):725-731. PMID 12610029. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12610029/
- Bang H, Edwards AM, Bomback AS, et al. Development and validation of a patient self-assessment score for diabetes risk. Ann Intern Med. 2009;151(11):775-783. doi.org/10.7326/0003-4819-151-11-200912010-00005
Written and maintained by the uncovermyrisk.com editorial team. We do not have a medical reviewer; every claim links to its primary source above. Last reviewed: 2026-11-01. Spotted an error? See About.