In a rather bizarre turn of events, South Korea has announced that it is changing the law defining a person’s age away from the traditional methods previously used, to instead adopt more universal methods. What this means, South Koreans are literally younger than they used to be.
The earlier methods used to take into account time spent in the womb, meaning that people were considered a one-year old at birth and citizens aged one year at the beginning of a new year rather than on their actual date of birth. Rather, this duo of methods meant that a baby could be considered two years old the day after birth if they were born on New Year’s Eve.
The new law removes the part that sees time in the womb count toward age, but still sees the annual turn of the year, meaning that many South Koreans are now a year, or even two, younger. The idea with this change will be to reduce legal disputes, complaints and social confusion over how age is calculated.
Thanks, Sky News.