this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2025
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From what I understand, they've been using the 'normal' system for most legal things since the 60s, and that was just how they socially talked about age, until it was abandoned in 2023.
The old system also added a year on New years, not on your birthday. Meaning a baby born 2 days ago would be 2 years old if they were born on December 31. Apparently, laws do still keep that standard for some age based regulations, like school, drinking age, voting age, and draft. Which kind of makes sense; everyone born in X year gains those things at the same time. A less arbitrary cut off date for schools, no awkward math whe checking IDs, just born in '04, you're good.'
Still seems confusing having 3 ages in different contexts though.
Fun fact: up until fairly recently, babies weren't often named until at least their second birthday. Hence, headstones with "baby", "junior", etc. littering pioneer graveyards and similar.
That kinda makes sense. Giving a name before knowing how the childs behaviour, temperament or similar is rather unintuitive. Also probably makes the loss a bit less hard if the child dies before it's at least a year old, which is probably the root cause for that costume.
It wasn't because of a hesitance to misname them. It was purely because of mortality rates. I appreciate your optimism, though. 🥹
Thanks for the context!
I went to school with a couple of Korean international students who explained their age hierarchy to me once, but I didn't really grasp the intricacies of it.