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South Koreans Become Younger Under New Age-Counting Law (bbc.com) 52

Posted by BeauHD from the less-confusion-the-better dept.
South Koreans have become a year or two younger as a new law aligns the nation's two traditional age-counting methods with international standards. The BBC reports: The law scraps one traditional system that deemed South Koreans one year old at birth, counting time in the womb. Another counted everyone as aging by a year every first day of January instead of on their birthdays. The switch to age-counting based on birth date took effect on Wednesday. President Yoon Suk Yeol pushed strongly for the change when he ran for office last year. The traditional age-counting methods created "unnecessary social and economic costs," he said. For instance, disputes have arisen over insurance pay-outs and determining eligibility for government assistance programs.

Previously, the most widely used calculation method in Korea was the centuries-old "Korean age" system, in which a person turns one at birth and gains a year on 1 January. This means a baby born on December 31 will be two years old the next day. A separate "counting age" system, that was also traditionally used in the country, considers a person zero at birth and adds a year on January 1. This means that, for example, as of June 28, 2023, a person born on June 29, 2003 is 19 under the international system, 20 under the "counting age" system and 21 under the "Korean age" system.

Lawmakers voted to scrap the traditional counting methods last December. Despite the move, many existing statutes that count a person's age based on the "counting age" calendar year system will remain. For example, South Koreans can buy cigarettes and alcohol from the year -- not the day -- they turn 19. [...] The traditional age-counting methods were also used by other East Asian countries, but most have dropped it. Japan adopted the international standard in 1950 while North Korea followed suit in the 1980s.
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South Koreans Become Younger Under New Age-Counting Law More

South Koreans Become Younger Under New Age-Counting Law

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  • all race horses have an age system like that so how did people become that way?

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Derling Whirvish ( 636322 )
      It's the difference between ordinal and cardinal numbers, just like the year. This is the 2023rd year of Christ's birth (ordinal) but people refer to it as 2023 (cardinal) incorrectly. The first year of your birth is from your birth until 12 months later. How old are you at 6 months? You are in your first year. That is incorrectly shortened to one year old in the previous system confusing "first" to "one." Also span versus point. The first year is a span of time. You are one year old at the end of that span

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        How old are you at 6 months? You are in your first year.

        You are 0 years old. You haven't been born for a year.
        On your first birthday you will be 1 year old. You will start your second year, but nobody cares about that as that's not what were counting.
        We are counting how many years after someone has been born. It's quite simple.

        Also
        Jesus is a fairy tale. Even if it was based on a real person. Nobody knows when that person was born either

        The date of birth of Jesus is not stated in the gospels or in any historical sources, but most biblical scholars generally accept a date of birth between 6 BC and 4 BC, the year in which King Herod died.

        • We are

          Right, we are. But they weren't. And that's why it's confusing for you but it's not that hard to understand.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Oh man, I'm getting nostalgic now. We haven't had a good argument over how much time has passed since the millennium, exactly 1999 years after the somewhat arbitrary start date of our calendar.

        • Not 1999. 2000. Each millennium is 1,000 years. 1 to 1,000, 1,001 to 2,000, 2,001 to 3,000 etc.
          And obviously not related to the time Jesus was born. With best estimates 4 BC to 9 BC.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            The problem is that the calendar start at 0001/01/1, so after one year has elapsed from the beginning it's 0002/01/01. Therefore 1000 years have elapsed by 1001/01/01.

            Thanks for playing, I do miss this.

  • Array first/last indexes [wikipedia.org].

  • Previously, the most widely used calculation method in Korea was the centuries-old "Korean age" system, in which a person turns one at birth and gains a year on 1 January.

    I am willing to bet that aging everyone on **January 1** is not centuries-old.

    • Not centuries, but more than a century anyway. Looks like Korea adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1895.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dargaud ( 518470 )
        I wonder how it worked prior. Maybe something like: "my kid has survived 5 winters"...

        • Do you think nobody tracked the positions of the moon, stars, and planets except Europeans? Most people around the world had a fairly accurate calendar system starting at least centuries ago. Even the Julian calendar which the Gregorian calendar replaced in Western culture had the year at 365.25 days - which was pretty close.

          Even the most primitive societies figure out the lunar cycle and day/night and how many of those there are between winters. Everything since has only been slight tweaks on accuracy a

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by dargaud ( 518470 )
            Absolutely. But it was important only to 2 kinds of people: the infrequent ecclesiasts who wanted certain prayers on certain dates, and the peasants who wanted to ensure not planting their grain too early or too late. For all the others a month earlier or later didn't matter much.

    • You just lost your bet. Starting the year around the winter solstice is an Asian tradition that is, if anything, older than the practice in the West.

  • I used to be a nightclub bouncer in Hawaii and we had to subtract 1 year from Korean passports when checking if we could admit them to the club. I didn't realize that some also marked their birthdays on Jan 1st. I wonder if a lot of South Korean 19 year olds were let into places where they didn't know either of these things?

  • ...to the list of incorrect assumptions programmers make about dates, ages, etc.

    • There can be a ton of issues with programming dates, but I'm not too worried about this one. Most software asks for your birth date, not your age, and I doubt that South Koreans were entering their date of conception.

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