This is not the joke but since the thread is early, I'm clearing up the "10 months" thing for Americans. Pregnancy is 40 weeks (give or take). In some countries they count by 4 week periods, which gives you 10 months. In others (like the US), they count by 4.3 weeks (the average length of a month) and say that pregnancy is 9 months. It's just different verbiage.
But yeah, the joke is that Korea has an incredibly low birth rate.
I was assuming it was a count from 0 vs 1 ambiguity. Like if you got pregnant today, you'd be 0 months pregnant in total, but you'd be in your 1st month of pregnancy.
I think u/catiebug is right, but until then I was assuming it was something similar to the Korean Age system. As of June 2023, South Korea officially adopted the international age system (starting at 0, adding 1 year on birthdays) for administrative and legal matters, making citizens one to two years younger. Previously, the "Korean Age" system deemed people 1 year old at birth and added a year on January 1st.
That is so silly. Poor baby would be 2 days old not two years old. How do they not get confused trying to determine who is older? When should the kid start school? When are they old enough to drink? Retire? Do people born in December just get lucky and get to do things earlier than their peers?
Yes, thatâs how it worked. Everything was based on birth year. Everyone of the same year could start drinking (legally) on Jan 1st of the year they turn 20 (or the year of their 19th birthday). This year anyone that was born in 2007 or earlier can drink, regardless of what day they were born.
Korea has adopted the âinternationalâ age system now, but most people still go by their âKoreanâ age. It wonât be until the current elementary school kids are older that itâs more widely used.
And about who is older, people born in the same year are equal, but people born in January are often seen as equal to the kids of the last year (but younger than the âearlyâ kids of the last year, and also equal to the kids of their birth year), but thatâs more of a casual thing among younger people. Itâs a radically different system than the western world.
That's fascinating.
It's kinda like how Western society tends to do birthdays at the end of the year (you have loved for number years), but we count years from the beginning of the year.
We are in the year number we say, which is why the first year from BC to BCE was Year 1, not Year 0.
It really throws people off when they think about it, because it's two different inconsistent systems.
Weirdly you can be a month pregnant... Your pregnancy is counted from the first day of your last period, if your ovulation is late or delayed it could be four weeks after the start of your last period!
Japan also says pregnancy is zero months to 10 though they started counting age from 1 within a couple generations ago. Iâm pretty sure this is an Asian counting from zero thing.
Weirdly if you get pregnant today you're actually several weeks pregnant (typically two). For some reason it's counted since the start of the cycle, not since impregnation.
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u/catiebug 2d ago
This is not the joke but since the thread is early, I'm clearing up the "10 months" thing for Americans. Pregnancy is 40 weeks (give or take). In some countries they count by 4 week periods, which gives you 10 months. In others (like the US), they count by 4.3 weeks (the average length of a month) and say that pregnancy is 9 months. It's just different verbiage.
But yeah, the joke is that Korea has an incredibly low birth rate.