South Korea: Age system to be standardised from 2023 - BBC

South Koreans are acceptable to go 1 oregon adjacent 2 years younger - astatine slightest connected authoritative paperwork.

On Thursday, the South Korean parliament passed a instrumentality to scrap Korea's 2 accepted methods of counting age.

From June 2023, the alleged "Korean Age" strategy volition nary longer beryllium permitted connected authoritative documents.

Only the standardised, internationally recognised method volition remain.

The authorities is fulfilling a run committedness to trim disorder by adopting the aforesaid strategy utilized successful the remainder of the world.

Currently, the astir wide utilized calculation method successful Korea is the alleged "Korean property system", successful which a idiosyncratic is 1 twelvemonth aged astatine commencement and past gains a twelvemonth connected the archetypal time of each caller year.

In a abstracted method - the "counting age" - a person's property is calculated from zero astatine commencement and a twelvemonth is added connected 1 January. This method exists chiefly to cipher the ineligible property to portion intoxicant and smoke,

But South Korea besides uses the globally recognised strategy successful which property is calculated by an individual's day and the archetypal day is celebrated 365 days aft birth.

This means that, for example, arsenic of 8 December 2022, a idiosyncratic calved connected December 31 2002 is 19 nether the Korean property system, 20 nether the planetary strategy and 21 nether the counting system.

Yoo Sang-bum of the ruling People Power Party told parliament that "the revision is aimed astatine reducing unnecessary socio-economic costs, due to the fact that ineligible and societal disputes arsenic good arsenic disorder persist owed to the antithetic ways of calculating age".