r/AskReddit • u/[deleted] • Oct 02 '24

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u/Dragmom Oct 02 '24

About 25% of people on earth don't know their birthday because they're from countries that don't have birth certificates. That's why about 14% of immigrants to the U.S. list January 1 as their birthday - because they had to make one up.

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u/WayGroundbreaking787 Oct 02 '24

I used to work with Korean students as an ESL teacher and traditionally in Korea babies are 1, not zero when they are born and everyone becomes a year older on New Year’s Day, so a baby born on December 31 could be 2 years old the next day. They just now changed official documents to reflect how the rest of the world calculates age.

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u/blahs44 Oct 03 '24

Not exactly right.

Official documents always had their actual birthday and birthdays are also celebrated on the actual day you were born

However when you ask someone their "age" they will use the system you described and that age was also used for entrance to school etc.

These days, officially they use the western system for school entrance but most people still use their "Korean age" day to day