YOON TO ADOPT STANDARD INT'L AGE

[Anchor Lead]

President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol’s transition team says it will adopt the standard international way of counting an individual’s age. Noting the widespread confusion caused by the co-use of three different age calculation systems in Korea, it announced plans to draw up a revision of the related law within this year.

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Born in November 2020, this baby is now 17 months old. Even the parents get confused over the complicated method to count their child's age.

[Soundbite] Kwon Se-yoon(Seoul Resident) : “When buying flight tickets, I often get confused about the age group of zero to two. I'm not sure how old my baby is under the international system. A small miscalculation means more payment. That’s a big difference.”

Under the so-called "Korean age" scheme, people are considered one year old at birth and gain a year on the first day of each new year. Therefore, babies born in December turn two just a month after being born. It appears that this is why many would-be-mothers are unwilling to give birth in December. Data over the past three years shows the smallest number of babies were born in December, while January saw the largest. The confusing age calculation method also causes administrative troubles. When a city government put up a job ad inviting those aged 60 or older, a 59-year-old under the international system lodged a complaint about the age requirement after being eliminated.

[Soundbite] Jeong Young-soon(Pyeongtaek City Gov’t) : “The applicant was born in August. We issued the ad in February. He didn’t understand our explanation that he must have applied after August.”

This is the reason the presidential transition team plans to unify the three age calculation systems and officially adopt the international standard. It explained the confusing co-use of the different schemes cause considerable social and economic costs, noting legal disputes over how to exactly count ages for the wage peak system and insurance contracts.

[Soundbite] Lee Yong-ho(Presidential Transition Committee) : “The adoption of the unified age calculation system is to reduce such social and economic costs and ease public inconvenience.”

The team plans to submit a revision of the related law to the National Assembly within this year.