South Korea eliminates traditional counting by age and makes its citizens younger

South Korea As of today, it stopped using its traditional counting system for age at the administrative level and universally adopted the international system, which reduces the age of its citizens by one or even two years in some official documents.

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under the korean traditional system everyone is one year old at birth (formerly it was considered that gestation lasted around one year) and also everyone, regardless of their date of birthautomatically turns one year old every January 1st.

This system makes, for example, a baby born on December 31, is already two years old on January 1, despite only a day having elapsed since delivery.

Until now South Korea used the international system, based on the date of birth, the traditional system and a third alternative system depending on the type of official document.

The alternative system, which is used in documents of the military administration or in educational recordsdoes not automatically add a year at birth but it does make everyone a year old at the same time with the arrival of the New Year.

Many in the country criticized for years that the convergence of the three systems generated confusion and additional costs to the public administration and made it difficult to provide certain social benefits or medical services.

For this reason, the president Yoon Suk-yeol promised when he came to power in May 2022 to eliminate the International system and the alternative, and the National Assembly (Parliament) approved the corresponding laws to do so last December.

Thus, taiwan is now the only Asian territory that still maintains the system of chinese traditional countingoriginated hundreds of years ago.

North Korea It abolished this system decades ago at the official and administrative level, although North Koreans often use the system informally to talk about their age, which South Koreans do as well.

For his part, he Ministry of Gender and Family Equalitywas quick yesterday to clarify that the modification does not affect the minimum age required to buy alcohol or tobacco and that the limit will continue to work the same, so Anyone can purchase these products from January 1 the year in which you turn 19.

Source: Elcomercio

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I am Jack Morton and I work in 24 News Recorder. I mostly cover world news and I have also authored 24 news recorder. I find this work highly interesting and it allows me to keep up with current events happening around the world.