Why do Koreans start at 1yr old when the rest of the world starts at 0?
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The responses so far are mostly modern interpretations of traditional East Asian age reckoning, which all originated from ancient China. Language tells us a lot about how the systems originally came to be.
The words for age do not refer to years, but actually comes from the names for the positions of the planet Jupiter in Chinese astrology. This was due to the belief that a person’s fate is determined by when they were born in the 12 (and wider 60) year cycle of the stars. These cycles start around the the point of the lunar new year in January or February.
So when somebody is said to be 1yr old, it means they are in their 1st cycle of Jupiter. They become 2 yrs old after their first lunar new year because a new cycle starts and they will be in their second one.
Koreans at some point decided to simplifying things and switch to using new year in the “modern” Gregorian calendar instead of the lunar new year for counting age. They also gained a new term for age, the “full year”, to distinguish traditional ages from the international system.
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