Topics: Ages in Korea

In Korea, when you are born, you are 1. They don’t do 1 month, 2 months, 6 months, like we do. You’re just 1. At the start of the new (lunar) year, you are two, regardless of when your birthday is.

For example:
If you are born on January 1st, you are 1 the day you are born. At the beginning of the new lunar year (this year it was February 14th), you would turn 2. So a baby born on 1/1/10 would be 1 for six weeks, and then turn 2. The age wouldn’t change on January 1st, 2011 like it does at home; the child would be 2 until Lunar New Year’s 2011 (in March, I think).

One of the teachers I work with says she’s 32 and older than me, however she was born in December 1979, and I was born in May 1978. (I told her to move to the States and she’d get younger!) 