South Koreans are all about to get younger; here's how

South Korea on Thursday passed a law to adopt the international standard of counting their citizen’s ages and scrape down their traditional method. This change will make South Korean citizens one or even two years younger than they are currently on their official documents. This law will end their traditional way of counting a citizen’s age.

According to their traditional method of calculating the age, a newborn is one year old the day he is born, and one year gets added into it every 1st of January instead of their Birthday. So, If someone is born on 31st December, they will be one year old on that day, and on 1st January, they will turn two years old.

However, a different process of calculating a person’s age exists when it comes to the legal age for consumption of alcohol and smoking, in which a person’s age is calculated from zero at birth, and a year is added every January 1st.

North Korea got rid of the ancient system of calculating age in the 1980s and used the global standard.

Earlier this year, in March, during the election champagne of current president of South Korea, Yoon Suk-yeol, a former prosecutor general, promised citizens of South Korea that if he gets elected, he will bring change and will abolish the country’s unique method of calculating age.

"The revision is aimed at reducing unnecessary socio-economic costs because legal and social disputes, as well as confusion, persist due to the different ways of calculating age," Yoo Sang-bum of the ruling People Power Party told parliament.

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