The South Korean Parliament approved, this Thursday (8), the standardization of the age counting system in the country. Currently, due to traditional rules in the Asian nation, South Koreans can respond in up to three different ways when asked about their age.
This is because the most widely used method in South Korea today is the so-called “Korean age system”. In that case, the person is born at one year old and gains one more on the first day of each year. To arrive at the calculation, South Koreans consider the period in which the baby is in the mother’s womb.
In addition, the Asian country adopts the system in which, as in the international standard system, the citizen is born with zero years. In this case, however, one year is added to each January 1st, even if the person was born one day earlier. This method exists primarily to calculate the legal age for military recruitment, drinking alcohol and smoking.
Finally, since 1960, South Korea has also used the international norm for calculating age from each real birthday for medical and legal documents – just as is done in Brazil, for example.
The change approved on Wednesday standardizes the legal system so that all South Koreans consider their age from the international system. With this, some citizens will be able to stay at least 1 or 2 years younger on their documents from June 2023, when the new legislation will come into force.
A person who was born, for example, on December 31, 2000, is 21 years old in the international system, 22 in the recruitment system and 23 in the Korean system.
The change was one of the promises made by the President of South Korea, Yoon Suk-yeol, since he was running for office. According to him, the traditional method when juxtaposed with the international system generated excessive costs.
“The revision is aimed at reducing unnecessary socio-economic costs because legal and social disputes, as well as confusion, persist due to different ways of calculating age,” said Yoo Sang-bum, MP from the People’s Power Party, the South Korean president’s party. .
The traditional age-counting method was once used in East Asia, but other countries such as China and Japan turned to the international system decades ago, according to The Washington Post.
To Reuters news agency, administrative employee Jeong Da-eun, 29, says she is happy with the change, saying she always had to think twice when asked abroad about her age. “I remember foreigners looking at me in bewilderment because it took me so long to respond about how old I was,” she said. “Who wouldn’t want to look a year or two younger?” she added.
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