Chris WrightWriter of Toe Poke2 Minute Reading
Tottenham Hotspur forward Son Heung-Min turned a year younger overnight this week after his native South Korea formally scrapped the unorthodox traditional way of calculating the age of citizens.
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The law was passed in December by newly elected Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol, who previously campaigned for the country’s unorthodox system of counting age to be abolished to bring it in line with the rest of the world. The order finally went into effect on Wednesday, effectively making every member of the Korean population a year or two younger by unification.
Korea’s traditional age system dates back centuries and sees the gestational age of all children included in their age, considering them one year old at birth. Every person gets a year older every Jan. 1 — even those babies born in December, who could be two years old even though they were born maybe just a week or two ago.
The common international age counting system (a child is counted as zero at birth and has a year added to their age every year from there) has also been in place in South Korea since the 1960s but is exclusively used for official purposes, such as medical. or legal documentation. Starting this week, the country has abolished its traditional system and will instead follow the international system in an effort to reduce the number of disputes and confusion that are likely to arise due to the difference between the two systems.
For the record, Son was born on July 8, 1992, and is 30 years old, according to the international aging system. Of course, despite the constitutional changes made in Korea, Spurs do not need to change any information on the registration of the forward because the club must provide the Premier League on a confirmed date. of birth, not an age.
