WANT to seem a little younger?
There's no need to lie about your age any more in South Korea, where the Government has passed changes to the official age-counting system which will automatically make citizens a year or two younger.
Currently most Koreans measure their lifespan by the so-called "Korean age", where a person is one year old as soon as they are born, and gain another year every New Year's Day.
That means a baby born on 31 Dec is automatically two years old the next morning - and to complicate things further, some people also add in the nine months of gestation.
The official change, agreed to by the National Assembly last week, will see Korea move to a more conventional arrangement like that in most other countries, where babies are zero when they are born and add a year every anniversary of their birth.
The Ministry of Government Legislation found that more than 80% of South Koreans supported unifying the age-counting system in a Sep poll, with the move part of a key campaign platform during the recent election won by President Yoon Suk Yeol.
He said having multiple age-counting systems - which are used to calculate the legal age for smoking and drinking alcohol - created "unnecessary social and economic costs".
The alignment with the international standard method will be officially implemented from Jun next year.
The above article was sent to subscribers in Pharmacy Daily's issue from 14 Dec 22
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