The South Koreans experienced this Thursday a veritable administrative makeover. The official age of some citizens of the country has indeed decreased by one year while the others have looked two years younger on paper. In question, the entry into force of a new system for calculating the age decided by the local authorities, says TF1 News.
The scum of the “Korean age”
The latter have indeed decided to put an end to the official operation, nicknamed “Korean age”. It consisted until then of considering that any baby born in the country was already one year old at the time of its birth. The inhabitants of South Korea then aged a year each January 1, and not on the anniversary of their birth.
Members of the Korean Assembly passed a law last December providing for the abandonment of this system in favor of a method of calculating age similar to that used in other countries. However, the measure only applies to official documents. The objective is to “resolve the social confusion caused by the use of various age calculations and the resulting side effects”, explained the parliamentarians at the time.
The complications were all the more disturbing as certain medical documents indicated for decades the age calculated according to the international method. Local authorities also relied on an even different system to determine whether Koreans could legally smoke and drink alcohol. Their age was then calculated starting from zero on the day of their birth and increasing by one year each January 1st.