Everyone in South Korea may be about to live a long-standing dream of humanity and turn a year younger.
New South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol plans to lower people’s age when he takes office. Strange as it may sound, there is a good reason for this decision. In most countries, people turn one year after birth. In South Korea the situation is much more complicated than that, and you can have a one-day-old baby who is 2 years old.
Three different age systems are currently used in South Korea. Those who use the traditional age system will be the group that will be the most youthful with the proposed change.
In the Korean age system, you are one year old when you are born. This is because the time you spend in the womb counts as a part of your life, even if you haven’t used it effectively. Complicating the situation even more, in this system, you are one year older on New Year’s Day, not one year after your birth. So, if you were born at 11:58 on New Year’s Eve, you’re two minutes later.
Another age system, the New Year birthday system, allows you to be 0 at birth, but you still get one year older each New Year instead of your birthday.
While the most widely used system is still the Korean age system, there are also those who use the international system where you are 0 at birth and return to 1 on the same day a year later. The use of these very different systems can cause bureaucratic problems, as can be expected.
Lee Yong-ho, chairman of the transition team’s political, judicial and administrative subcommittee, spoke of the decision to make everyone internationally age-appropriate, saying, “Due to the different calculations of legal and social age, when receiving social, social and other administrative services or signing various contracts. “We’re faced with constant confusion and unnecessary social and economic costs from disagreements about calculating age when interpreting or interpreting it.”
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