'Benjamin Button' Moment For South Koreans: How New Law Will Make Citizens 'Younger'

Amid the population crisis in South Korea, the country passed a law on Thursday that will make its citizens either one or two years younger on official documents.

What Happened: The government’s new law would scrap its traditional method of counting ages and adopt the international standard, reported Yonhap News Agency.

In Korea, a baby is deemed to be a year old when born, and a year is added every Jan. 1. Once the traditional way of counting age is scrapped, South Koreans will step into the world of Benjamin Button. In the 2008 movie, ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,' the protagonist is born old, but starts ageing backwards.

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Although this is the age most commonly cited in everyday life, it calculates the legal age to drink alcohol and smoke as per international standards. Since the early 1960s, Seoul has used the international standard for medical and legal documents as well. 

“The revision is aimed at reducing unnecessary socio-economic costs because legal and social disputes, as well as confusion, persist due to the different ways of calculating age,” Yoo Sang Bum of the ruling People Power Party told parliament.

This development came amid South Korea’s severe population crisis as its fertility rate dropped earlier this year, shattering its world record. According to the United Nations’ global population projections, it is the world’s fastest-aging nation among economies, and its population of 51 million people is at a prospect of more than halving by the end of this century.

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