whatilearned
Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-61117434
TIL South Koreans hay 3 ways to measure age. In the traditional social method, a baby is considered 1 year old at birth, then 2 years old on January 1 regardless of birth date. A baby born on December 30 would be considered 2 years old only 2 days after it’s birth.
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This is the dumbest thing I have ever heard that was factual.
It can create problems at school. Worked at a school there and when enrolling, some parents would put their child’s Korean age and other not. This meant you might have 2 years difference in ages between students in a grade so some students were not ready, at all, for the grade level they were in.
So when determining a South Korean baby’s age, never rely on the parents’ word.
I just watched a YT video where someone said, “I’m 30 in Korean age” and I thought it must have been mis-subtitled. How fortuitous to see this post an hour later!
This sounds ridiculous.
These people also believe running a fan in a room with no windows or closed ones will rob you of oxygen, suffocating you.
I used to argue with my Korean students about this all the time as they’d all claim (on medical/insurance forms) to be 1-2 years older than we consider them
This is unfortunately a rather large misnomer, as someone with Korean family members themselves, only one of the methods is used: a baby is considered 1 year old at birth, due to the several months from conception. From then on, the birthday is used as normal so it’s just their age + 1. Not entirely sure where bbc got their info from and even if it was true these other systems are sparingly used if ever nowadays.
Are we still doing phrasing?
So they do it wrong.