South Koreans will ‘get younger’ thanks to change in age calculation

Fulfilling the wishes of many around the world, South Koreans will cut one or even two years in 2023, thanks to a law that surpasses traditional age calculation systems.

The current system, commonly known as the “Korean age”, assigns people an age at birth and then adds years instead of birthdays every January 1.

But on Thursday, the country’s National Assembly passed a series of laws mandating the use of the international age calculation system in official documents. These changes will be implemented in June.

The National Assembly said in a statement that the decision was taken to “solve the social confusion caused by the mixed use of age calculations”.

In addition to the traditional system, the country uses another method to determine the legal smoking or drinking age, which assigns a zero age to newborns and then adds an age every 1 January.

Since the 1960s, some medical and legal records have also used the international standard.

This means, for example, that a person born on December 9, 2022 on December 31, 1992 is 29 years old in the international system, 30 in the Korean drinking method, and 31 in “Korean age”. .

Chairman Yoon Suk-yeol supported this change because of the administrative and social problems caused by this disparity in counting methods.

For some South Koreans, the change is an obvious source of joy: “I’m two years younger, I’m so happy,” commented one Twitter user.

“I turned two right after I was born because I was born in December. I’m finally about to go back to my real age.”