Subsequent yr, South Koreans will flip a yr or two youthful — if solely on paper.
South Korean lawmakers voted on Thursday to standardize the best way the federal government counts an individual’s age, in an try to maneuver away from using several alternate methods — together with a distinctively Korean custom of counting folks as 1 at start and including a yr on Jan. 1.
The thought of uniting behind one customary gained traction, even because it bumped up towards a convention that touched on many facets of on a regular basis life: from the mundane duties of filling out paperwork to authorized milestones like the proper to vote.
Nonetheless, traditions can die arduous, and there’s no assure that the brand new system shall be utilized in extra casual circumstances. In South Korea’s hierarchical society, as an illustration, age determines the best way one particular person speaks to at least one one other, and the regulation can not compel to folks to stay to the only system in these conditions.
“South Korea is getting youthful!” the Justice Ministry stated in a statement asking folks to “unite” behind the brand new system for official paperwork that can carry the nation into alignment with the worldwide customary.
Voting almost unanimously, the Nationwide Meeting handed the invoice and despatched it to the cupboard, which should approve it earlier than it heads to President Yoon Suk Yeol. The simplified construction was promoted by the president throughout his marketing campaign earlier this yr. He’s anticipated to signal the invoice, clearing the best way for it to take impact six months later.
Utilizing only one age counting system would “reduce pointless conflicts associated to age and to determine social practices that conform to worldwide requirements,” the bill said.
South Koreans have counted their ages in three alternative ways for many years. In on a regular basis life, they’re a yr previous at start and rely up each New 12 months’s Day. In some contexts — when figuring out one’s eligibility to drink, smoke or serve within the army, for instance — they merely subtract their start yr from the present yr. And for many authorized and official functions, they comply with the remainder of the world: folks begin from zero and add a yr on each birthday.
As soon as the invoice is signed into regulation, the federal government would comply with the worldwide method. Infants below 1 yr previous may have their age counted in months.
Ambiguity round age counting strategies has prompted no scarcity of bewilderment. It has led to disputes over age-based insurance coverage payouts in visitors accidents. Kids’s medicines checklist goal ages, with out specifying how the ages needs to be calculated. A dispute over an organization’s collective-bargaining settlement wound up earlier than the South Korean Supreme Court docket earlier this yr, as a result of the settlement didn’t specify which system its age-based pay brackets adopted. (The court docket used the world customary.) Lack of readability over vaccine and Covid testing eligibility has led to chaos at well being clinics and check websites.
The standard methodology of counting age is deeply ingrained in South Korean tradition. Beginning yr, not start date, as an illustration, is the premise for the Korean zodiac system. The usage of phrases like “oppa” or “hyung” (methods of addressing an older brother), and “unnie” and “noona,” (which imply older sister) relies on the age of the age of the folks concerned within the dialog, and that, too, relies on start yr.
However the invoice obtained broad help from the South Korean public. Greater than 80 % of the nation’s residents surveyed by the federal government in September stated they supported the invoice, providing many causes: It will resolve the confusion and inconvenience brought on by the assorted age calculation strategies; break down the hierarchical tradition sustained by the Korean age counting methodology; and “decrease folks’s perceived age.”
Greater than 85 % of the respondents in the identical survey stated they might additionally change to the usual methodology in on a regular basis life if the invoice have been handed.
Whether or not folks will truly abandon the standard system stays to be seen. That, specialists stated, would take a while.
“The standard method of calculating age is tough to desert,” stated Shin Jiyoung, a professor of Korean language and literature at Korea College. “It’s so carefully entwined to the Korean language.”
“It’s vital to acknowledge why we’ve got saved utilizing it regardless of how complicated it’s,” she added.
