South Koreans will celebrate their birthday like the rest of the world from 2023. The South Korean parliament is abolishing traditional age calculation methods and adopting the “international” census as the standard law. For South Koreans, therefore, age depends on the number of days, months and years that have passed since the date of birth.
Under the old system, South Koreans had suffered one year at birth. Every South Korean then turned one year older on January 1. In that system, a child born on December 31st could be two years old two days later.
In addition, an alternative method was also used – the so-called counting system. Also, someone is zero at birth, but everyone still ages at the same time on the first day of the new year. This method was primarily used to determine who was old enough to drink alcohol and smoke.
South Korea will then switch to the system used worldwide next year. In it, a person is only one year old when 365 days have passed since the day of birth. Someone officially only ages on their personal birthday, rather than January 1st. That system was also already used in South Korea, but from June 2023 it will still be the only way to calculate age.
From June 2023, the Korean age system will no longer be allowed on official documents such as passports and driver’s licenses. The passage puts some South Koreans in the conspicuous position of making them “younger” by a year or even two on paper.
As of today, a South Korean born on December 31, 2002 today would have three different ages. For example, he is 21 in the Korean system, 20 in the counting system and 19 in the international system.
