Why Koreans Get Younger When They Leave Korea
“How old are you?” is usually considered a basic question, right? Ask a Korean and you might find out that it’s a complicated question, because the Korean system for counting age is different to the Western system. I found this out not long after I started teaching in Perth, and my students were asking each other about their ages. One Korean girl took a deep breath and looked at me quizzically. “Korean age?” I had no idea what she meant, but then she and a few other Korean classmates explained the story.
The Korean Age Counting System
When you’re born in Korea, you’re one year old. That’s just how they count it - although some people say that the gestation period counts as the one year, in fact that’s not really the reason. And then when January 1 rolls round, everybody in Korea adds another year to their age.
Say you are born in October in Korea - you’re already one year old. Come January, you turn two - by our reckoning, you’d be just a few months old, but Koreans are two already. That means that Koreans might be one or two years “older” when they talk of their Korean age - and they love coming to a Western country and getting younger!
Different Doesn’t Mean Stupid
There’s more to this story back in my classroom. After the Koreans explained about their Korean age being “older”, a student from Europe piped up with a loud “That’s stupid!”. I told her immediately what I thought about that comment. Before the next class started she came to me privately and told me she was sorry she’d said it, and she’d meant to say “That’s strange” instead. We both knew this little story wasn’t true, but she was trying to redeem herself. And she was a lot more open to other cultural differences for the rest of the school term.
More About Korean Ages and Relationships
If you want to know more about how Koreans calculate their age and how they relate to people depending on whether they’re older, younger or born in the same year, I came across a really great series of podcasts at a site called KoreanClass101.com. The podcast on Korean Culture: Age has a really interesting explanation (and you can learn a few Korean words at the same time). They also look at the curly issue of polite language and when to use it.
Excelent. Your blog is really interesting. To have a good blog you should not only to add something, but do it from the heart. You managed with it - thanks.