South Koreans become younger overnight after country scraps ‘Korean age’

July 3, 2023 5:47 AM

Under legislation that came into effect Wednesday, “all judicial and administrative areas” across the East Asian country will adopt the “international age” system used by most of the world, ending years of debate about the problems caused by the formerly common use of “Korean age” and “calendar age.”
posted by Etrigan (28 comments total)

For years now I’ve been using “Jack Benny age” to hold the line at 39.
posted by notyou at 5:54 AM on July 3, 2023 [7 favorites]

I celebrated the 20th anniversary of my 39th birthday.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 6:26 AM on July 3, 2023 [5 favorites]

My dad was 56 for a number of years, but no one passed legislation to force him to grow up.

Seriously, though, do the Korean systems really use January 1st? I had heard that traditionally. in China everyone got a year older on the lunar new year. I would have expected Korea to do something similar.
posted by Winnie the Proust at 6:35 AM on July 3, 2023

My teenage son is a diver. For purposes of competition, divers are assigned to age groups based on their age on December 31 of the current year. So he’s been competing this year as a 16yo even though he will be fifteen for another month. He’s been getting his butt kicked in the 16-18 group, and feeling very sorry for any divers with December birthdays.
posted by Well I never at 6:44 AM on July 3, 2023 [3 favorites]

From what the article says, the exceptions are not so much "different age calculation" rules but just blanket "everyone who will be X in this year" for army duty, alcohol, and similar. Which makes sense from an ease of admin POV.
posted by Meatbomb at 6:55 AM on July 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

Whoa, I love this stuff. So if I'm understanding this correctly, when I was less than a month old, my Korean age would have been 2.

Yeah, I can see how that would be confusing.
posted by rhymedirective at 7:18 AM on July 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

@Well I never - this is a studied phenomenon in hockey, where most hockey pros are the ones born early in the year, likely because those extra few months when they're young makes them "better" than their peers, so they're more likely to be picked for special training, and more likely to be cultivated in higher leagues. Because of the disparity being artificial, this cohort is also on average not as good in their pro careers.
posted by ptfe at 7:43 AM on July 3, 2023 [11 favorites]

Seriously, though, do the Korean systems really use January 1st? I had heard that traditionally. in China everyone got a year older on the lunar new year. I would have expected Korea to do something similar.

Someone should do an FPP with an answer to this exact question.
posted by star gentle uterus at 7:43 AM on July 3, 2023 [5 favorites]

ptfe: Because of the disparity being artificial, this cohort is also on average not as good in their pro careers.

At first the chart you linked to seemed to show the opposite, until I realized that it wasn't normalized per-player. So I did that, and got what I believe is average career points per player by birth month, also normalized to a 30-day month:

101 January
101 April
101 May
104 March
108 November
118 June
119 August
121 February
125 September
127 July
129 October
135 December

Looks like Wayne Gretzky scored 3% of all the points ever scored by players born in January. Without him, January drops down to 98.
posted by clawsoon at 8:17 AM on July 3, 2023 [10 favorites]

While getting on the international standard is probably for the best, I don't think the Korean system is particularly confusing, especially if there's a shared understanding.

People are hung up on the English convention, "years old," but it's not weird to say a newborn is 1 if that "1" refers to "in their 1st year." New year? The baby is now in their second year.

Not a measure of length of life, per se, but how many years (as shared by society) the baby has seen. Same as in fantasy settings where they might talk about a child "having seen 7 winters" or what-not.
posted by explosion at 8:18 AM on July 3, 2023 [5 favorites]

This ensures that the members of BTS stay the right age to be in a "boy band" just a little bit longer.
posted by Strange Interlude at 8:25 AM on July 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

I got so confused thinking about this that I found myself googling my own age.
posted by the charms of plurality at 8:40 AM on July 3, 2023 [6 favorites]

This ensures that the members of BTS stay the right age to be in a "boy band" just a little bit longer.

But who is the best member of BTS, and did they benefit from being just before or just after the age cutoff?

(I suppose to answer this question definitively we'd need data on at least a few hundred boy bands... hmmm...)
posted by clawsoon at 8:40 AM on July 3, 2023

I had heard that traditionally in China everyone got a year older on the lunar new year.

Oh yeah, on the 7th day, but most Chinese communities even in China follow the Gregorian calendar anyway so these days it's just treated as a cute thing (unless of course you're tracking genealogy etc). The cute thing is probably because it's well after the allotted public holiday for many so inevitably you do little nods to it (like once I was in an exercise class and the instructor was just full on, wheeee happy birthday everyone!!).

ETA: I forgot to add, the English term I know it by is "Mankind's birthday".
posted by cendawanita at 9:01 AM on July 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

Re the hockey thing I wonder if there is an relationship between birth month and number of seasons playing where being born earlier means on average fewer seasons just because you are half a year older at the start of any particular season.

Or what the distribution of goalies vs defensemen vs forwards is by birth month.
posted by Mitheral at 9:16 AM on July 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

We do have something like this in the US with children - children are identified as being in "Xth grade", so they all advance to a new age on the first/last day of school.
posted by madcaptenor at 9:20 AM on July 3, 2023 [5 favorites]

But who is the best member of BTS, and did they benefit from being just before or just after the age cutoff?

Rap line bias!!

Having dated someone for a long time who is a huge BTS fan, there are no best, only favorites. :)
posted by Gadarene at 9:53 AM on July 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

In exchange, we should do the Korean system to centuries, so that the 1st century would be the 100s, 2nd the 200s, and so on, so that the 2000s would be the 20th century, and we could forget about the current nonsense.
posted by Pyrogenesis at 10:06 AM on July 3, 2023 [3 favorites]

The interesting thing to me about the Korean age counting system is that it was already a hybrid - they went Western with the calendar and start the year on January 1 instead of the second new moon after the winter solstice, but maintained their traditional age-counting system.
posted by thecjm at 11:13 AM on July 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

All racehorses born in the northern hemisphere have January 1 as their official birthday. (Southern hemisphere horses have August 1 as their birthday.) This is done so races (like the Kentucky Derby) strictly for "3 year olds" can be organized. I believe this is assigned to be the official bday in the year they are born, so a horse born in December turns "1" when it is less than a month old.

At this stage of my life, I would not mind suddenly being younger, if it was miraculously accompanied by actually being more youthful. Please?
posted by maxwelton at 1:16 PM on July 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

in fantasy settings where they might talk about a child "having seen 7 winters" or what-not.

Not just in fantasy. In Anglo-Saxon times your age really measured that way, by the number of "winters in the world" you had been through. The book of that name by Eleanor Parker, describing the Anglo-Saxon calender, is fascinating.
posted by vincebowdren at 2:08 PM on July 3, 2023 [4 favorites]

In Anglo-Saxon times your age really measured that way, by the number of "winters in the world" you had been through.

as someone from the Upper Midwest I totally get it
posted by taquito sunrise at 2:46 PM on July 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

But who is the best member of BTS, and did they benefit from being just before or just after the age cutoff?

The best member of BTS is, obviously, Kim Namjoon, Kim Seokjin, Min Yoongi, Jung Hoseok, Park Jimin, Kim Taehyung, and Jeon Jungkook. Biggest benefits are arguably to Taehyung, whose birthday is Dec 30th, and to Yoongi, who gets to be thirty for an extra six months or so.

It may help to understand the origin and persistence of this system to know that, culturally, it's really important in Korea to know whether someone is older, younger, or the same age as you. It can affect what kind of language you use with them, behavior and social expectations. So as a practical matter, all the people born in the same year as you form your same-age cohort; even if your birthday is early in the year, you don't become "older" than the later-born for a few months, you're all still the same age.
posted by radiogreentea at 7:09 PM on July 3, 2023 [7 favorites]

This is a great idea, should do it every year!
posted by donio at 12:10 AM on July 4, 2023

I grew up in Canberra Australia, and if you were 4-5 years old it was called Kindergarten.

Now live in Melbourne with a 5 year old child, and it's called "Prep" or "Foundation".

In summary, life is a set of contrasts. Thank you for listening to my presentation.
posted by chmmr at 12:24 AM on July 4, 2023

I taught English in SK for a while. I remember trying to explain this to the folks back home. My mom just shook her head. My dad went, uh huh. Personally I thought it was fascinating.

As for me, I'm 29 and will be for the foreseeable future. In fact next year will be the 20th anniversary of my 29th birthday,
posted by kathrynm at 7:14 AM on July 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

it doesn't quite help bts, actually.

they're running out of deferral time and will have to join the armed forces as part of their mandatory service and that's still based on the year they were born, regardless of actual date.

given their status it's likely they'll get cushier placements but they'll still have to go through boot and such; and given their largely clean, good boy image, it's very unlikely we'll see one of them try to dodge it somehow (leaving the country like yoo seung-joon, false medical records like ravi from vixx), and they'll likely have to follow some strict rules or face backlash from the public or government when they do go (e.g., rain, psy)
posted by i used to be someone else at 8:15 AM on July 5, 2023

also, this new law basically simplifies and codifies a lot of things. for example

- passports, the judiciary/legal system, retirement, healthcare, all have used the international reckoning (0 at birth + 1 every full year). this just expands it to pretty much everything except for school eligibility, mandatory military service (for AMAB individuals regardless of their gender identity, which has led to some thorny issues), and the legal age for partaking in vices (drinking, smoking, etc.)
the exception for school and military is to keep the existing structure of cohorts together (everyone in the same year can be informal and not use honorifics), and it's likely that's also why drinking was kept as such as well, given how alcohol has traditionally been used as a bonding agent (ironic for a solvent)

- codifies calendar reckoning (0 at birth + 1 every solar new year), because some would actually only add the 1 at lunar new year, and does the reckoning by solar birthday (because some traditionalists used their lunar birthday)

- korean reckoning (1 at birth + 1 every new year (solar, lunar, take your pick, see how much of a headache it can be)) will no longer be used for legal or civil purposes, but if people want to use it still, it's fine, though younger generations seem to be less interested in it.

- other idiosyncratic methods (e.g., 1 at birth + 1 every full year) are also ignored.
posted by i used to be someone else at 8:26 AM on July 5, 2023 [2 favorites]