Friday 21 September 2012

Birthdays and Age, a crazy confusion 2: the lunar calendar

If you read the last post... The korean system for counting age would mean that anyone born in Korea on the 31 December is 1 year old, and the next day they would turn 2 years old. Crazy you think? This is Korea, so things inevitably get crazier...

In Korea there are 2 calendars or ways of counting the days of the year. They are 양력yang-nyeok / The Solar, modern/western calendar and 음력eum-nyeok / the Lunar, ancient/chinese calendar. The two big holidays 추석chu-seok / the Korean harvest festival and 설날seol-lal / lunar new year's are determined by the lunar calendar and 설날seol-lal / lunar new year's is the beginning of the lunar new year and calendar. Some people count their age, not by the Solar calendar, but by the lunar one. Instead of getting one year older on the first of January, they get one year older on the first day of 설날seol-lal / lunar new year's. Just like Easter'seaster is also determined by the ancient European lunar calendar exact days change every year, so do 설날seol-lal / lunar new year's's. So if you use the lunar calendar to count your birthday, the day changes every year too.

Luckily it's mainly old people and people from Daegu who like to make things like this extremely confusing by counting their age through the lunar calendar. Because the date changes every year, and its difficult to keep track of when your birthday is on the solar calendar, some people just make up a solar birthday and put it on their ID. Other people, tired of stupid foreigners always asking questions, just say "I don't know when my birthday is."

1 comment:

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