28-6-2023 (SEOUL) Lee Jung-hee, a housewife based in Seoul, was anticipating her 60th birthday next year. However, South Korea made a significant change on Wednesday by abandoning its traditional method of calculating age, resulting in Lee becoming a year younger—and she couldn’t be happier.
South Korea was the final East Asian country to officially adopt a unique age counting system, which labeled newborns as one-year-old and considered the months spent in the womb as part of their first year of life.
Under this system, individuals aged up with each passing year, rather than on their actual birthdays. For instance, a baby born on December 31 would be considered two years old on January 1 in Korean age.
Starting Wednesday, South Korea has transitioned to the international age calculation system, aligning age with a person’s actual date of birth. Consequently, everyone will now be officially recognized as one or two years younger.
“It feels good,” expressed Lee, the Seoul-based housewife, in an interview with AFP. She further added, “For people like me, who were supposed to turn 60 next year, it makes you feel like you’re still young,” chuckling with delight.
While China, Japan, and even North Korea abandoned this age counting system decades ago, it persisted in South Korea, even as the nation gained prominence on the international stage with cultural exports like K-pop and kimchi.
The traditional system led to confusion when foreigners inquired about Koreans’ age, as it necessitated calculations to convert between Korean age and international age. Office worker Hong Suk-min shared, after a thoughtful pause, that he was 45 in international age but 47 under the Korean system.
The official change is expected to have limited practical impact since many legal and administrative functions, such as passport information, juvenile prosecution age, retirement benefits, and healthcare services, already utilize date-of-birth as the basis for age determination rather than the Korean age.
The government hopes that the shift will alleviate confusion, citing instances where older Koreans mistakenly believe they are eligible for pensions and free travel benefits several years earlier than they actually are.
Seoul’s Minister of Government Legislation, Lee Wan-kyu, who oversees the age change process, conducted a media briefing on Monday, attempting to guide Korean journalists on how to determine their age. He explained, “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.”
Certain areas, such as school years, compulsory military service eligibility, and the legal drinking age, currently operate on a separate age system known as “year age.” According to Lee, this system will remain unchanged for now. For example, all individuals born in 2004, regardless of whether their birthday falls in January or December, will be eligible to initiate the military enlistment process from January 1, 2023, as they are all legally considered to have reached the minimum age requirement of 19.
The government may consider revising the use of “year age” in these areas based on the outcome of the current changes, Lee mentioned.
The concept behind “year age” is to mitigate linguistic-based hierarchies in South Korea, ensuring that individuals in the same school year are considered the same age. This allows them to communicate without using honorifics or formal titles.
“Age really matters” in South Korean culture, explained anthropologist Mo Hyun-joo, as it determines one’s relative social status and dictates the appropriate titles and honorifics to use when addressing others. Mo added that it is challenging to interact with people without knowing their age, often leading to the use of terms such as “unni” (older sister) and “oppa” (older brother) instead of using names in conversations.
Over time, as people become more accustomed to using international age in school settings, the “hierarchical age-based culture in South Korea may gradually be neutralized,” noted Mo. This shift could occur as individuals grow accustomed to the international age counting system.
For now, most South Koreans, including schoolboy Yoon Jae-ha from the southern port town of Busan, can relish the feeling of being younger as the new legislation comes into effect. “My age has shrunk,” he happily shared with AFP. “I like being younger because then my mum will take care of me longer.”
