Korean Age System

If you are in Korea, you will get 1 age or 2 more ages. 

Have you heard about Korean age system? It's really, really odd to people who are not korean. Because, we don't grow a year older on our birthday, we do on 1st of January, on new year's day, everybody at the same time!

It can be a little bit difficult to understand. Let me explain with a graph. 

Ok, basically, this is it. We count a newborn baby's age as 1. We don't start from 0, like normal age. Then, according to korean age system, we get older when it's new year, doesn't matter when the baby was born, on new year that baby got +1. Then, the birthday come. But, birthday is just the day that the baby was born, and that's it. The baby is still 2 years old. Then, on new year, get older again. 

Let's take an extreme example. There's a baby who was born on December 31st, 2014. Since he was born, his age was 1 on December 31st. No matter what, every single people get older on new year, so even though he was just born, he's 2 years old on January 1st, 2015. He literally lived for 2 days but he's age is 2 years old. On 2015, he's always 2 years old. Even on his birthday, December 31st, 2015. And the very next day, he will get +1, which is 3 years old, on January 1st, 2016. 

So when foreigners come to Korea, they grow a year older or 2 years. If you already have passed your birthday of that year, you get +1 on your age, and if you haven't, +2. 

Since every single people grow a year older on new year, no matter when you were born on certain year, same year born people are all same age. Because of this, we can group people with age. Same year born, same group. This group go to school at the same time, be a same class, and they don't get mixed with other age group. Different age, different class. So normally friends relationships are between same age people. Since we can differentiate people with age, the treatment between different age group has become really important to koreans. If someone is older, we cannot call their name, or 'hey' in korean. It is really rude in Korea. Only to somebody who is same age or younger people, you can call their names or hey. There's some way to call somebody who is older that you. 

Upper side is older age, and under is younger age. As I said, it doesn't matter when you call someone who is younger than you. You only have to care about when you call somebody who is older than you. You can call either only that title or name+that title but not allowed to call just name. 

You probably know Psy's Gangnam Style. The first lyric is "Oppan gangnam style." He is saying "I'm gangnam style." to some younger girls.  Since they have to call older man as "Oppa", he's just calling himself as "oppa" to them.

North? South? Korea

Ideas about North Korea : Kim Jeong-eun, Dictatorship, Poverty, Famine...

However, 

Ideas about South Korea : Gangnam Style, K-pop, IT, Samsung...

As a korean who is staying in a foreign country, the most popular question was absolutely about "North Korea". Seriously, almost right after I introduced myself, they started to ask super deed questions about North Korea. To help the people who want to know about North Korea but who doesn't have any korean friends, and who want to know about how south koreans think about North Korea.

1. How do you think about North Korea?

woo, too generous question. In a short sentence, we belong together. We were same country for 5000 years, have been separated for around 60 years. We use pretty much same language, have almost same custom, students learn about the history when we were 'whole Korea', etc. The difference is, their policy is communism, socialism, but our policy is democracy, capitalism.

2. Will Korea become one nation? Or, do you want to be?
Yes, in some decades, i guess. But NOT NOW. Since I think we are basically same country and there are so many families that have been separated unwillingly, I hope someday we can be together. The technology that South Korea has, and the materials that North Korea has, if we can be a united nation and combine it together Korea can develop much more that now. However, there're so many things that South Korean must sacrifice for. Let's see a case of Germany. Berlin had been separated a while, and while they were separated, West Berlin became wealthy and East, not. So when they've been together the West had to pay so much money for the unification as taxes. Even though South Korean became wealthier than the past, we are not ready for paying huge taxes, and not especially for North Koreans. They are extremely poor ($1800 PPP 2013 and South Korea $33000), we have so much deep gap between both economics. OVER 18 TIMES! We definitely cannot afford that. We don't want to be poor just because we want to get unification.

3. What do you think about all the threatening from Kim Jeong-eun?
We hate him, but really don't take care much of his blackmailing..... really. We care much more the stock market got depressed when Kim Jeong-eun say something. well, they have nuclear boom but it's not the thing we scared of. Firstly, they cannot use nuclear boom. If they boomed it, they are dead also because USA will attack them, and also because of the radioactive energy can spread, it would definitely not gonna be the best work they can do. It's just a bluffing when they want to get some rice or aid.

4. Any interesting things about North Korea?
We use same language-korean. We can understand a lot each other, but like British-American English, sometimes we use different words. South korean tends to use original english as a korean way of speaking, but north korean tends to change the word as their own way. For example, we call ice-cream as ice-cream(아이스크림). Similar pronunciation but not exactly english pronunciation. Still, we don't change. But in north korean, they call it as eol-eum bosung-i(얼음보숭이) which means ice something. In fact, I don't know what bosung-i means. Eol-eum means ice in both korean, so I can understand some, but some I can't.
North Korea has hierarchy. It based on how their family has a royalty in the government and dictator. Based on this, there's some college that you can or cannot go. Since the children of North Korea are very young, they learned as their dictatorship is honorable and especially Kim family is like a god. They really have a faith in them. Here's a interesting story. It was 2003, when north korean cheerleader visited South Korea for National physical competition. It was raining, and the cheerleaders saw the photo of  Kim Jeong-il(previous North korean dictator) and Kim dae-jung(previous South korean president)were shaking hands, and got wet. They got off the car and cried and claimed to put the photo somewhere else so that the photo cannot get wet. Well, it was pretty shocking for every South korean that they really admire the dictators. Also, so many north koreans starved to death but they use $1,6 million for conservation of the corpses of Kim family. We don't want to get unification with this mind.....


To sum up, we want to be unified one day, but not for few decades. Not with their such poor economics and their mind. We don't hate North koreans, we feel pity for them that they don't have freedom. But we hate their government that controls north koreans to have a faith in Kim family. But because of the fact that we were same countries for 5000 years and we have so many separated families, we ought to be together one day.

*This is myself who represented the south koreans' opinion. It cannot be the whole south koreans, because everybody has different thoughts. Just read this blog as a general idea, not for the entire people. Thank you. Questions would be appreciated on comments.