Lee Jung-hee feels rejuvenated. This South Korean, who was due to turn 60 next year, lost a year overnight, with the abandonment of the age-old age calculation system in South Korea on Wednesday.
Until now, a baby was automatically one year old when they were born and aged a year every January 1 – not on their birthday as the international system dictates.
Thus, under the Korean age, a child born on December 31 was automatically 2 years old the next day.
But on Wednesday, Seoul buried its traditional counting system for good, instantly rejuvenating thousands of South Koreans by one or two years…
“It feels good,” exclaims Lee Jung-hee, a housewife from Seoul. “For people like me, who are supposed to be 60 next year, you still feel young,” she laughs to AFP.
South Korea was the last country in East Asia to count the months spent in utero to determine the age of its nationals. China, Japan and even neighboring North Korea abandoned this system decades ago.
“It’s complicated when a foreigner asks me my age because I know he wants to talk about my international age, so I have to do some calculations,” Hong Suk-min, a 47-year-old office worker, told AFP. by Korean age, but 45 in the rest of the world.
From now on, the law requires the use of the international system for official documents.
The reform will have a limited impact: the age on a passport, the age at which you can be criminally prosecuted as a minor, pension benefits or health services already use the actual date of birth.
But Seoul hopes dropping the Korean age will lessen the social confusion that arises from using different systems.
“There is a difference between the age that Koreans use in their daily lives and the legal age,” minister Lee Wan-kyu told AFP, saying that this difference “could give rise to various legal disputes”.
This minister in charge of government reform started a press conference on Monday, explaining to Korean journalists how to calculate their age from now on.
You have to “subtract your year of birth from the current year. If your birthday is past, you get your age, and if your birthday is not past, then subtract one to get your age,” he said. patiently explained.
But Seoul still calculates differently the age of its nationals for compulsory military service or the legal age to smoke or consume alcohol. To fix this so-called age “of the year”, the years are counted from zero at birth, and every January 1st.
This system will remain in place for the time being, the minister announced, without ruling out a later reform of the “age of the year”.
In South Korean culture, “age really matters,” anthropologist Mo Hyun-joo told AFP, because it has an impact on social status, titles and other honorifics.
In Korean, “it’s hard to communicate with people without knowing their age,” she says, noting that instead of using names, terms like “unni” and “oppa” – which mean respectively big sister and big brother.
The anthropologist believes it is possible that over time, the “hierarchical culture based on age will fade a bit” by dint of using the international age.
For now, most Koreans, like schoolboy Yoon Jae-ha of Busan, a southern port city, are content to feel younger as the new laws come into force.
“My age has shrunk”, he rejoices, before adding: “I like being younger, because my mother will take care of me longer”.
28/06/2023 06:24:45 – Seoul (AFP) © 2023 AFP