What's Your Age in Korean?

Something that was very surprising to me was the discovery that in Korea, the aging system works somewhat differently than the system we are used to in America, or in other words, the only system I ever thought existed. In Korea, you are considered to be 1 year old when you are born. Then, regardless of what month you are born in, your age increases by 1 year on New Year's Day. So, if you are born on December 31st, you are 2 years old the very next day. Because of this difference in counting systems, I have begun referring to my age as "24, in Korean." In case you are unsure, I was born in July of 1987, which makes my age 22 in most other parts of the world.

One interesting byproduct of this counting system is that on your birthday, your age does not change at all. I personally feel that this devalues the day, as many of my students seem to receive very little acknowledgment on their actual day of birth. Often when I ask what they will be doing to celebrate their birthday, the response is, "Nothing." However, this could be a result of the personality tendencies of children and teenagers rather than the method of counting.

Another interesting result of the Korean age system is that young children are only friends with people who are the exact same age as themselves. Since school classes are grouped by age and all people who are born in the same year have the same age, this friend pairing is more or less inevitable. In classes at the school where I teach, classmates are mixed in their ages and grade levels. Nonetheless, children who seem to be friends in class sometimes do not actually consider each other to be friends because of their age difference.