The South Koreans have not found the elixir of youth, but their new president intends to rejuvenate the population by a year.
Before being sworn in as president on Tuesday, Yoon Suk-yeol had repeatedly indicated that he wanted to abolish the Korean age, favoring the more conventional international system.
There are three ways to count age in South Korea. In the traditional system, children are already a year old when they are born and gain a new year every 1er january. Thus, a child born on December 31 turns two the next day.
This way of calculating the years would take into account the nine months spent by the fetus in the womb of its mother. Another explanation would be that old numeral systems did not use the digit zero.
The international system, according to which a newborn must wait one year after birth before blowing out his first candles, was introduced in South Korea in 1962. It has since been used in administrative documents and the Civil Code.
Despite this institutional change, Korean age remains the majority in social interactions.
Added to this is a third system, where children start from age zero, but gain a new year every 1er January, regardless of their date of birth. It is according to this method that we determine in particular the date of military conscription and enrollment in school.
In this country where age is a major determinant of social interactions, the different systems create a lot of confusion. And the pandemic has accentuated the administrative difficulties.
The government has in fact mixed the traditional and international systems by establishing the conditions for access to the vaccine against COVID-19 and for the use of the vaccine passport. Several Koreans thus had to present proof of vaccination when they had not been able to obtain their dose.
According to the Korea Timeslegal disputes have also erupted between unions and their management over the retirement age, arguing over whether to use the Korean or international age.
“We have suffered unnecessary social and economic costs due to continued confusion regarding the calculation of age when receiving social assistance and other administrative services, or during the signing or interpretation of various contracts” , Mr. Yoon had declared in April.
Korean governments are not at their first attempt to abolish the traditional system, but they have all ended in failure, so difficult is the transition. The elected candidate of the People’s Power Party can, however, count on the support of the population. According to a survey conducted in January by the firm Hankook Research, 71% of South Koreans are in favor of the abolition of the traditional age system.
The new government, which made the abolition an election promise, plans to submit the legislative changes to the National Assembly this year, with the aim of having them adopted before the end of next year, the news agency reported. Korean Yonhap, indicating that the change should be done in stages.
A controversial character
A novice in politics, the new president Yoon Suk-yeol made himself known to the general public as an inflexible prosecutor, when he worked on corruption scandals smearing the country’s top officials. The Conservative, however, sparked several controversies during his campaign.
An outspoken anti-feminist, he has pledged to abolish the Ministry of Gender Equality, which has spearheaded progress for South Korean women since 2001. He has argued that South Korean women do not suffer from systemic discrimination , despite ample evidence to the contrary.
His words prompted young women to mobilize against him. Mr Yoon won the election with the narrowest margin ever. And his transition committee later said he would keep the Ministry of Gender Equality for the time being.
The new president has also committed a series of blunders, from praising one of the country’s former dictators to bashing manual labor and Africans.
During his campaign, Yoon threatened nuclear-armed North Korea with preemptive strikes and called Kim Jong-un a “rude boy”, pledging to his constituents to “teach him the good manners”. During his inauguration on Tuesday, Yoon Suk-yeol finally called on his neighbor to “complete denuclearization”.
With Agence France-Presse