Character · Parasite
Ki-taek Kim's IQ, and what Parasite's IQ Score actually reveals.
How smart is Ki-taek Kim? Smart enough that "Ki-taek Kim's IQ" is one of the most searched questions about Parasite. Here is the defensible read of the mind the show actually builds, the 168/200 IQ Score behind it, and why no invented number does it justice.
The answer
Ki-taek Kim anchors Parasite as one of its central intelligences, and the show earns a 168/200 IQ Score (Masterclass tier) for how seriously it builds that mind. That score is the real, measurable answer the search is circling. The specific IQ figures floating around online are invented; no clinical IQ test applies to a fictional character, and TVI does not fabricate one. We rate the work, not the character, on a published 0 to 200 rubric.
Who Ki-taek Kim is, and what kind of intelligence the show actually depicts
Ki-taek Kim (Song Kang-ho) is the patriarch of the working-class Kim family whose semi-basement Seoul apartment and unfolding scheme to infiltrate the wealthy Park family's home form Bong Joon-ho's Best Picture-winning film. The character's intellectual signature in the show is the working-poor-paternal cognition of someone whose moral architecture survives until the specific catastrophe Bong's screenplay engineers, intelligence-as-collapsed-by-class-violence, the rare cinematic protagonist whose specific class-rage finale the film takes seriously rather than treats as genre payoff.
This is the part of the question "what is Ki-taek Kim's IQ" that the search engine flattens. The real question, the one viewers are circling, is whether the show treats Ki-taek Kim's mind seriously. That's the question TVI can actually answer.
What the IQ Score reveals about the portrayal
Parasite scores 168/200 (Masterclass tier), Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best International Feature Oscar winner, and Ki-taek Kim is one of the structural reasons. Song Kang-ho's performance committed to letting the Korean working-class-paternal cognitive register be the actual subject rather than as backdrop for the class-thriller premise. The 'plan' line in the rainy basement scene and the birthday-party-finale violence are canonical Bong scenes because Song's character work establishes their actual stakes.
For the full score breakdown, Cognitive Stimulation, Educational Value, Craft & Quality, and the rationale, see Parasite on TV Intelligentsia. Or read what an IQ Score is and how it's calculated.
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