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South Koreans shed a year or two as tradition-rooted age-counting system ditched

29 June 2023 11:55 (UTC +04:00)

Many in South Korea have been voicing their approval of the new legislation that made many of them a year or even two younger, APA reports citing Sputnik news.

After the country officially scrapped its traditional methods of counting age on June 28, adopting, at least for official documents, the globally accepted approach to determining how old you are, many South Koreans online conceded that the “Korean age system” had been a confusing one.

"I am planning to study abroad actually, but now I can just tell them my real age without all the confusion. So I like it," South Korea's Arirang News cited one person as saying.

Many other people welcomed the new approach to counting their age because it "made them feel as though they had become younger."

In other words, the South Korean civil code now recognizes that a person's age starts to be calculated from their date of birth, with a year added at each birthday. Prior to June 28, when the new law took effect, people in South Korea were typically older than elsewhere around the world, as they had their very own specific practice of counting one’s time spent in the mother’s womb as also adding to age.