(ORDO NEWS) — The new president of South Korea, Yoon Suk-yeol, plans to reduce the age of people after taking office. As strange as it may sound, there is a good reason for this.
In some countries, people turn a year old after birth, but in South Korea, things are much more complicated – it is quite possible that you can have a newborn who is also 2 years old.
Currently, there are three systems for judging age in South Korea.
In the Korean age system, the moment you are born, you are considered a one-year-old child. This is because time spent in the womb is considered part of your life, even if you haven’t actually made the most of it.
To further complicate matters, under this system, you don’t age the year after you were born, but on New Year’s Day. This means that if you were born at 11:58 a.m. on New Year’s Eve, you would be two years old in two minutes.
In addition to putting extra pressure on the newborn (why isn’t she talking yet, she’s already two), the system lags behind most of the world. There is another system in the country that allows you to be 0 years old at birth, but still makes you old every new year, but not on your birthday.
The most commonly used system is still the Korean age system, although some use the international system where you are 0 at birth and 1 year later on the same day. In addition to being simply confusing, it raises practical complications.
“Due to different age calculations, we have faced unnecessary social and economic costs due to constant confusion and disputes over the calculation of age when receiving social and other administrative services or signing or interpreting various contracts,” said Lee Yong-ho, head of political , judicial and administrative committee.
Perhaps with the new system, when people are asked about their age, they will be able to accurately answer this question.
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