S Korea Changes Law About How to Count Age

choi

Timothy W Martin and Dasl Yoon, e; It tops face cream: country shaves year off ages. Wall Street Journal, June 28, 2023, at page A1.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/south-korea-age-law-change-1a9efc03

My comment: In Taiwan, people heard of the practice in the undefined past, but as far as I know, nobody in Taiwan in modern times did. And certainly no law on how to count age.
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SEOUL—Like many people, Kim Hae-yeon struggled with turning the big 5-0. Unfortunately, she’ll have to do it twice.

“I’m 50,” she says, “but turning 48 soon.”

On Wednesday, Kim and the rest of South Korea will turn a year or two younger as a new national law kicks in that abolishes the unusual way this country has long calculated age.

For centuries, Koreans inflated ages compared with the rest of the world. An individual is 1-year-old at birth, and everyone gains a year together on Jan. 1. A New Year’s Eve baby turns two after a single day.

The new law will switch everyone to the international age standard—which starts people at zero on the day they are born. Koreans already born will get younger, and use their birth to determine how old they are. Official documents will start using the international measure, too.

Kim, a stay-at-home mother, will have to face 50 again in 2024.

Getting older based on calendar years rather than birth dates is a remnant of ancient culture in East Asian countries, which generally also considered time spent in the womb as part of age.

China and Japan shifted to the global standard decades ago. South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, who took office last year, vowed to do the same on the campaign trail.

“South Korea Is Getting Younger,” the government said in a press release trumpeting the passage of the time-bending bill.

The country’s giant age reversal has some wrinkles.

It complicates South Korea’s hierarchical society, in which age influences social status—and like other cultures determines whether a more polite or casual version of language is used.

South Koreans nonchalantly ask even relative strangers, “how old are you?” The query is so common that before the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, authorities explicitly advised locals to not ask this question of foreigners, who might find it rude.

“Kids when they bump into each other at the playground will first ask their ages before their names,” says Sun Hyun-woo, the founder of Talk to Me in Korean, a website that teaches the language online.

Lee Jin-soo has been 15 but will be rolled back to 13 under the new law. At school, some of his classmates with whom he has long shared an age will be 14. They already are asking Lee to address them with the honorific title of “hyung,” or older brother.

“I’m upset that I have to wait until my birthday in October to become the same age as them,” he says.

According to guidance issued by South Korea’s education ministry, students shouldn’t dwell on their new differences. “It may seem awkward at first,” the guidance adds.

Kim Ji-soo, an office worker, turned 30 in January and under the shift, will be 29. He plans to continue to give that older age in public because he feels it gives him more stature, especially at work where he sensed some co-workers looked down on him for being in his 20s. “I’m going to stick with 30,” he says.

But Park Jeong-yeon, also an office worker, is delighted she will soon age backward to 28, from 30 years old. That buys her more time to meet her parents’ goal that she marries by her mid-30s.

“There was always a sense of urgency with my parents telling me I was becoming too old to act like a child,” Park says. “Well, now they’ll have to accept I have two more years in my 20s.”

To prevent gray areas, the new law carves out some exceptions. South Korea will keep the old age-counting method for determining when kids start elementary school and when young men must get a physical for military conscription. And the legal drinking age of 20 will change to 19, effectively remaining the same.

“Can Those Born in 2004 Still Legally Drink? The Still-Puzzling ‘International Age,’” screamed a recent news headline. (Yes, they can.)

Watching the years rewind will be a relief to expats such as Sasha Smirnova, who moved to Seoul from Russia at the end of 2021 as a 30-year-old and soon learned her Korean age was 32. “I was like, ‘Come on people,’” says Smirnova, who works for an information-technology company.

Some Koreans never learned how to compute their global age, which has prompted promotions by companies and a government campaign on how to do the math.

Eleven Street, an online retailer, set up a giveaway for those using its “International Age” calculator. The prizes are antiaging products, including a $1,200 LG skin-care device that stimulates collagen growth, as well as Estée Lauder night-repair cream.

Amusement-park operator Lotte World said those with birthdays in June or July could receive discounted tickets to its theme parks after 2 p.m. The advertisement gushed: “Goodbye to my old age!”