SEOUL: Lee Jung-hee was set to turn 60 next year but South Korea dropped its traditional age counting system Wednesday, so the Seoul-based housewife just got a year younger - and she's thrilled.
South Korea is the last East Asian country to officially still use a method of calculating age that determines babies are aged one at birth, counting their months in the womb as their first year of life.
Under that system everyone gets a year older with the turn of the year rather than on their actual birthday, meaning a baby born on December 31 would be considered two years old on January 1 in Korean age.
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From Wednesday South Korea will use the international system that calculates age according to a person's actual date of birth, meaning everyone will officially become a year or two younger.
For people like me, who were supposed to turn 60 next year, it makes you feel like you're still young, she laughed.
China, Japan, and even North Korea dropped the system decades ago but it has endured in the South, even as the land that gave the world K-pop and kimchi played a larger role on the international stage.
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It's confusing when a foreigner asks me how old I am as I know they mean international age, so I have to do some calculations, office worker Hong Suk-min told AFP.
The official change will have limited practical impact: many legal and administrative functions, including the age listed on a passport, the age at which one can be prosecuted as a juvenile, retirement benefits, or healthcare services, already uses date-of-birth rather than Korean age.
The government hopes the change will ease confusion and cites, for example, the issue of older Koreans who may believe they are eligible for pensions and free travel benefits several years before they legally are.
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There is a difference between the age Koreans use in their daily lives and their legal age and because of that, various legal disputes may arise, Seoul's Minister of Government Legislation Lee Wan-kyu told AFP.
Lee, who is overseeing the official age change, opened a media briefing on Monday by attempting to teach the assembled Korean journalists how to determine how old they are.
Subtract your birth year from the current year. If your birthday has passed, that's how old you are, and if your birthday has not passed, subtract one to get your age, he said.
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Some key areas, including the school year, eligibility for compulsory military service, and the legal drinking age, are determined by another separate age system -- known as year age -- and this system will remain in place for now, Lee said.
This means that, for example, everyone born in 2004 -- whether January or December -- is eligible to begin the military enlistment process from January 1, 2023, because they are all legally considered to have met the minimum required age of 19.
The government might consider revising the use of year age for such areas depending on how the current changes go, Lee said.
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The idea behind year age is to ease South Korea's linguistic-linked hierarchies by ensuring that everyone in one school year is considered the same age and so can speak to each other without using honorifics.
Age really matters in South Korean culture, anthropologist Mo Hyun-joo told AFP, because it affects one's relative social status and dictates which titles and honorifics one must use for others.
People typically use terms such as unni and oppa -- meaning older sister and older brother respectively - rather than names in conversation, she said.
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South Korea's hierarchical age-based culture (might) become neutralised a little over time, Mo said, because people become more used to using international age in school settings, for example.
For now most South Koreans, such as schoolboy Yoon Jae-ha from the southern port town of Busan, can simply enjoy feeling younger as the new legislation comes into effect.Under the “Korean age” system, babies are considered to be one year old on the day they are born, and every January 1, a year is added to people’s ages – regardless of their actual birthdate. For example, a baby born on New Year’s Eve becomes two years old the next day.
There is a second counting method – a mix of the international and Korean age systems – in which a baby is born at zero years, and one year is added every January 1.
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So if a woman was born in August 2003, she would be 19 years old under the international system, 20 using the mixed method and 21 under the Korean system.
Under the new law, the country will use the international system that calculates age according to a person’s actual date of birth, meaning everyone will officially become a year or two younger.
Many legal and administrative functions – including ages listed on passports, the age at which one can be prosecuted as a juvenile, and those to qualify for retirement benefits and healthcare services – already use actual dates of birth rather than the Korean system.
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Other key areas such as school year eligibility, compulsory military service, and legal drinking and smoking are based on the mixed counting method and will remain in place for now, Minister of Government Legislation Lee Wan-kyu told a news briefing on Monday.
The move might ease confusion in society, for example, over the issue of older Koreans who may believe they are eligible for pensions and free travel benefits before they are legally entitled.
“It’s tremendously confusing for many people; some people think of how old they are in terms of the Western way of counting, others do according to the Korean way of counting, and there is in fact more than one way of doing it the Korean way so to speak, ” Se-Woong Koo, a South Korean journalist, told Al Jazeera.
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“Some people think your age increases with the Lunar New Year, not with the Solar New Year. Some people wonder if their birthday has anything to do with it.”
Yoon Jae-ha, left, shows his international age of eight and Korean age of nine next to his father, Yoon Dong-gun, whose international age is 43 and Korean age is 44 [AFP]
“In South Korea, it’s very common for someone to assert superiority in a social hierarchy according to their age. The older you are, the more respected you are, ” Koo said.
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“When you ask people their age, the answer Koreans usually give is their year of birth, and what the new system now means is that people have to be quite precise in saying exactly how old they are, and this will certainly lead to a renegotiation of the dynamic in the social sphere.”
One of the aims behind the change is to ensure that everyone in a specific school year is considered the same age and, therefore, can speak to each other without using honorifics.
“Age really matters” in South Korean culture, said anthropologist Mo Hyun-joo, because it affects one’s relative social status and dictates which titles and honorifics one must use for others.‘South Korea’s government has given its citizens the gift of youth.’ Hong Suk-min poses with a whiteboard showing his international age (45) and his Korean age (47). Photograph: Anthony Wallace/AFP/Getty Images
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Imagine someone offered you the chance to take a couple of years off your age – no catch, no need to hide your passport or cross your fingers that no one checks up on your LinkedIn claim to have graduated in 2008.
You’d jump at it, wouldn’t you? The people of South Korea certainly have: their government has just given its citizens the gift of youth, making them all a year or two younger overnight.
This is because South Korea is scrapping the eccentric system it previously used to count the age of its population. At birth, a baby was deemed to be one, and then a year was added every 1 January, regardless of their actual birthday. Those born on New Year’s Eve were two before the week was up.
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Naturally, this caused no small amount of administrative chaos, with legal disputes, complaints and confusion over how to calculate ages draining the country’s resources, according to the president, Yoon Suk Yeol. Concerned that it put South Korea out of step with the rest of the world, officials have now switched to the internationally accepted method. One day you’re 66, the next 64.
As far as vote-winning policies go, UK politicians could do worse than to pay attention. After all, we’re owed it. When my younger sister recently turned 36, she was lamenting having to say a final farewell to her early 30s. “It just feels like I’m suddenly hurtling towards the end of the decade, ” she said. “How did that happen?”
It made me wonder what I’d been doing at 36. I racked my brain. Come on, it was only three years ago – something of note must have happened. Then the penny dropped: we were in lockdown. The majority of that year was spent at home, weeding the garden and trying to elevate the week’s fourth meal of beans on toast. Before I knew it, I
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