South Korea: The South Korean Parliament has passed a historical law to scrap country’s two traditional methods of counting age. The country decided to adopt international standard age system.
The shift to new system will make its citizens either one or two years younger on official documents. The traditional “Korean Age” system will no longer be permitted on official documents from June 2023.
The revision is aimed at reducing unnecessary socio-economic costs because legal and social disputes as well as confusion persist due to the different ways of calculating age.
Mr. Yong Sang-bum, representative of People Power Party, commented.
According to the traditional system, Koreans are deemed to be a year old when born and a year is added every 1st January. Koreans mostly use this age in their everyday life.
A separate system is also used for conscription purposes or calculating the legal drinking and smoking age, in which a person’s age is calculated from zero at birth and a year is added on January 1.
Since the early 1960s, South Korea has been following the international norm, that is, calculating age from zero at birth and adding a year on every birthday, for medical and legal documents.
The Korean government passed the new law as a part of fulfilling a campaign promise to reduce confusion by adopting the same system used in the rest of the world.