- Age might be just a number, but numbers can get really confusing.
As the wise prophets of Smash Mouth once sang: the years start coming, and they don’t stop coming. It’s a regrettable fact of life that you never get any younger.
Unless you were a South Korean citizen on June 28, 2023.
On that date, the South Korean government officially adopted the international age-calculating method. And just like that, all South Koreans were suddenly a year or even two younger.
Until now, South Korea had used a traditional method that accounted for our time in the womb. Of course, it’s impossible to say precisely when you’re conceived, so the approximations the system allowed for resulted in various confusing quirks.
The government decided to scrap the system altogether to make calculating ages easier for South Koreans — and foreigners, in particular. But the old counting method will still live in a few places, such as determining when young South Koreans are allowed to buy their first beer.
Add One, Divide by Five, Carry the Six…
But what on earth did South Korea do differently when calculating people’s ages? Well, we should first spell out the international age counting system.
It’s the one you’re already familiar with. Your personal clock starts running the moment you burst screaming out of your mother and you’re deemed to be one year older on every anniversary of your birth.
That’s not how South Korea used to do it. As we mentioned, they wanted to also count the time every person spends in the womb.
However, that makes it virtually impossible to know your birthday. So, South Koreans devised a way to approximate it.
They counted every person to be one year old the moment they were born. Then, every January 1, you would add one year to your age.
Granted, South Korea has used the international birthday system since the 1960s on legal and medical documents. In everyday life, however, many, if not most South Koreans went by the traditional counting method.
The Case of a Two-Year-Old Newborn
The traditional system is undoubtedly an important part of South Korea’s cultural heritage. However, it does result in some problems.
Let’s look at an extreme example, shall we?
Picture a baby girl born on December 31 at 11 p.m. At the moment of her birth, the child would be counted as being one year old.
Yet, the year changes merely an hour later. The calendar rolls into January 1, when another year gets added to everyone’s age.
So, we now have a baby who’s been out in the world for barely over an hour. According to the South Korean system, though, she’d already be two years old.
But so what — age is just a number, right? Well, yes, until you start getting into subjects like medicine.
While South Korean doctors were familiar with the international system, many citizens still went by the traditional one. Now, let’s fast-forward 10 years and say the girl from our example gets sick.
Her mother goes to the drugstore to buy some over-the-counter medicine. She checks the safety guidelines, which state the medicine is not safe for children under the age of 12.
That’s great — she considers her daughter 12 years old, after all! Biologically, though, she’s only 10 and has a serious negative reaction to the medicine.
Who’s to blame? The medicine was sold in South Korea and the mother calculated her daughter’s age using the South Korean method. What reason did she have to think the age specified on the packaging didn’t conform to her country’s system?
‘Entire Nation Got Younger Together’
It’s situations like this that the South Korean government wanted to avoid with the change. President Yoon Suk Yeol said reducing “social and administrative confusion” was the ultimate goal behind swapping to the international system.
Yet, the traditional method still survives in a couple of places.
South Koreans won’t be able to buy alcohol until they turn 19 according to the traditional system. Similarly, men will still be called in for their mandatory conscription on January 1 when they turn 18.
These systems may also change eventually. They haven’t yet because doing so will require changing the language of very specific laws, which needs an extended process.
But how do average South Koreans feel about the change? For the most part, they seem to be on board.
“It’s always good to be younger,” laughed Oh Seung-youl, now 61, from Seoul.
“My birthday is December 16 and I became two years old less than a month after I was born. That’s why [the old counting method] doesn’t make sense.”
Some did have their concerns. Age-based seniority is an important part of South Korean culture and the new age system does mess with that.
“You are losing as much as two years!” said Choi Duck-sang, a 56-year-old office worker who admitted he was concerned about water cooler politics.
“Still, I think this is a change that should have been made much earlier. It’s a good thing — the entire nation got younger together.”
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