Quite unlike most countries on the globe, South Korea does not start counting a child's age from zero as soon as he is born. In fact, as soon as it comes out of its mother's womb, it is already considered one year old. That's because birthdays are counted every January first. Understand why.
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Where did this system come from?
Basically, the habit of accounting for age in this way is very old in Asia. However, although it started as a strong tradition in China and spread to other nations, South Korea is the only culture that maintains it. Including, the country also has other different systems for counting age.
The first is this, more popular, in which the baby is born at one year old and becomes one year older on New Year's Day, regardless of the date he was born. The second is the system officially recognized by the State, in which babies are born at 0 years old, but also gain a year each New Year's Eve. Finally, there is the international system, which counts age from the person's date of birth.
Koreans can be up to 3 ages
In the end, with so many systems, South Koreans can be as many as three different ages. A person born on December 20, 2000, for example, would be 21 at the international age, 22 at the country's official age, and 23 at the popular age among society. Soon, some problems have been appearing for the government.
Inevitably, this system brings a lot of confusion among the population, which ironically gets bigger with the clash between generations. This is because some disagreements regarding age are causing some social and economic damage, especially when it comes to disputes to receive social services, retirement, etc.
Furthermore, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the consequences of so many methods for measuring age appeared. When the government tried to interim between the international age and the official age to define vaccine eligibility, there was real logistical chaos. Because of this, there are already bills to abolish this method.