Key Points
- South Korea's parliament passed a bill on Thursday to standardise the way citizens' ages are calculated.
- The new laws would ban the use of traditional methods of calculating ages for official documents.
- Most South Koreans are said to back the move.
People in South Korea are set to become a year or two younger after the nation's parliament passed laws to scrap its traditional methods of calculating ages.
The change means that from June 2023, all official documents will be required to list a person’s age using the standardised, internationally-recognised method.
The age of children under a year old will be counted in months.
How are ages traditionally calculated in South Korea?
There are two traditional methods of calculating someone's age in South Korea.
The most widely-used method in everyday life is the "Korean age system", where people are considered to be a year old when they're born. Another year is then added to their age every New Year's Day.
Another method, the "counting age" exists primarily for conscription purposes or to calculating the legal age to drink alcohol and smoke. Using this method, a person's age is considered zero at birth with another year added each New Year's Day.
But since the early 1960s, South Korea has used the standardised international method for medical and legal documents, where a person’s first birthday is marked a year to the day after they were born.
For example, if someone was born on 9 December 1992, they are 30 under the international system, 31 under the counting age system, and 32 under the Korean age system.
Why is the change being made now?
The confusing array of systems has caused issues, most recently during the COVID-19 pandemic where eligibility for vaccines and testing wasn't clear.
"The revision is aimed at reducing unnecessary socioeconomic costs because legal and social disputes, as well as confusion, persist due to the different ways of calculating age," Yoo Sang-bum of the ruling People Power Party told parliament.
The change was a campaign promise made by President Yoon Suk Yeol, and is also backed by most South Koreans.
A September poll conducted by the Ministry of Government Legislation found more than 80 per cent of South Koreans surveyed supported using just one age-counting system.
More than 85 per cent of respondents said they would switch to the international method in their daily lives if the bill passed.
Jeong Da-eun, a 29-year-old office worker, is happy about the change, saying she has always had to think twice when asked overseas about her age.
"I remember foreigners looking at me with puzzlement because it took me so long to come back with an answer on how old I was," she said.
"Who wouldn't welcome getting a year or two younger?"
With Reuters
