This sounds like a great way to preserve privacy, use the same birth date every year for all people born that year. Then no one can use birth date as identifying information (it should never have been used that way to start with). The birthday parties would be epic also!
Millennia ago, all legal documents used a system like these.<p>Documents were dated in years of the reigning monarch (because using any other system was disrespectful), but the year would always change on a given date in order to help keep things consistent.<p>When Alexander's realm was split into four friend/foe kingdoms, they agreed between them to start a common dating system, that all documents would count from a common date.<p>OT - It seems that they tried to remove any memory of Alexander - we have very few docs from Alexander's time; much, much less than expected - presumably, holding such a document was forbidden. On some records (such as the astronomical tables) the dates were falsified, probably so as to deny his reign. The decision to make a common date was likely related.
It appears this is based on the Chinese lunar calendar, they did it the same way in China back in the day. You start at 1 and get older on Chinese new year. So you can be 2 a day after you're born. :-)
Such an odd system because Koreans don’t even ask for ages when asking they just ask for birth years because of how wonky this system gets.<p>Kind of glad they’re finally putting this old system to rest.
Very curious, do anyone know if Koreans are used to do birthday parties so?<p>Otherwise there is maybe a big business to grow there regarding the fact that they will maybe start to celebrate it like the rest of us in a few years when they will be used to the new system.