South Korea has passed laws abandoning the traditional method of calculating age in favor of an international standard, a change that will make all its citizens a year or two younger on official documents, The Guardian reports.

Koreans are considered one year old when they are born, and a new year is added every January 1st. This age is most often mentioned by Koreans in their everyday life.

There is a different, separate system for hiring and for calculating the legal drinking and smoking age, where a person’s age is calculated from zero at the time of birth and a year is added on January 1.

However, since the early 1960s, South Korea has also used the international norm of counting from zero at birth for medical and legal documents, adding a year to each birthday.

This confusing array of systems will disappear – at least from official documents – from June 2023, when new laws come into force requiring only the international method of calculating age.

“This change aims to reduce unnecessary socio-economic costs as legal and social disputes and confusion continue over different ways of calculating age,” Yoo Sang-Bum of the ruling People Power Party told parliament.

Jung Da Eun, a 29-year-old office worker, welcomes the change and says she always had to think twice when asked about her age abroad.

“I remember strangers looking at me in amazement because it took me so long to answer my age,” she said.

“Who wouldn’t be happy to look younger for a year or two,” she added.

The origins of this system are unknown. One theory is that at birth a person is one year old, taking into account the time spent in the mother’s womb – nine months rounded up to 12. Others connect this system with an ancient Asian numbering system that had no concept of zero.

Adding a year to January 1 is even more difficult to explain.

Some experts say that ancient Koreans placed their birth year on the Chinese calendar with a 60-year cycle, but in times when there were no regular calendars, they ignored their birthday and simply added a whole year to the first day of the lunar calendar. This extra year on January 1 became commonplace as more South Koreans began to follow the Western calendar.

(Source: news.ro)