Imagine someone offered you the chance to take a couple of years off your age – no catch, no need to hide your passport or cross your fingers that no one checks up on your LinkedIn claim to have graduated in 2008.
You’d jump at it, wouldn’t you? The people of South Korea certainly have: their government has just given its citizens the gift of youth, making them all a year or two younger overnight.
This is because South Korea is scrapping the eccentric system it previously used to count the age of its population. At birth, a baby was deemed to be one, and then a year was added every 1 January, regardless of their actual birthday. Those born on New Year’s Eve were two before the week was up.
Naturally, this caused no small amount of administrative chaos, with legal disputes, complaints and confusion over how to calculate ages draining the country’s resources, according to the president, Yoon Suk Yeol. Concerned that it put South Korea out of step with the rest of the world, officials have now switched to the internationally accepted method. One day you’re 66, the next 64.
As far as vote-winning policies go, UK politicians could do worse than to pay attention. After all, we’re owed it. When my younger sister recently turned 36, she was lamenting having to say a final farewell to her early 30s. “It just feels like I’m suddenly hurtling towards the end of the decade,” she said. “How did that happen?”
It made me wonder what I’d been doing at 36. I racked my brain. Come on, it was only three years ago – something of note must have happened. Then the penny dropped: we were in lockdown. The majority of that year was spent at home, weeding the garden and trying to elevate the week’s fourth meal of beans on toast. Before I knew it, I was turning 38 during the government’s Omicron plan B.
I’m not alone in feeling robbed. While much attention has rightly been paid to the impact of lockdowns on the development of young people, it’s OK to acknowledge that it kept the rest of us in a holding pattern, too, denying us the daily interactions and experiences that help us to progress, mature and accept the ageing process. Is it a coincidence that there seems to be a collective reluctance in my social circle to embrace our significant birthdays that I don’t recall from before? Take it from me: I turn 40 next year and rather than throw a big party, as I did for my 30th, I fully intend to flee the country.
Admittedly, I feel the South Koreans’ pain on a personal level, given that my own birthday is on 3 January. There’s nothing guaranteed to make the start of a new year seem even more loaded with pressure to turn over a new leaf than instantly becoming a year older, too. But I think we could all do with a reset.
Now South Korea is showing us it can actually be done, albeit with some important loopholes. The new system won’t deprive people from buying alcohol and cigarettes, or change the year in which they enter education or become eligible for up to 21 months of compulsory national service.
I realise it’s rather self-indulgent to feel this way, particularly when our age on paper should be less relevant than ever. We’re living longer, and there’s no doubt that 40 doesn’t look the same as it did for our grandparents’ generation, just as 70 no longer consigns you to the blue-rinse brigade.
In our society, nothing is prized more than youth, particularly if you’re a woman. I’m reminded of the scene in Fleabag when, during a feminist lecture, the speaker asks an audience of women to “raise your hand if you’d give five years of your life for the perfect body”. Only Fleabag and her sister do – bad feminists, or the only honest people in the room?
In an ideal world, we would all understand that age is just a number and no reflection on how to live your life. Still, the path to reaching that place of acceptance might be made smoother were we given a couple of years extra to take a run at it. Just don’t ask to see my birth certificate.
Claire Cohen is a journalist and the author of BFF? The Truth About Female Friendship
