SEOUL (Reuters) -South&nbsp;Koreans&nbsp;became a&nbsp;year&nbsp;or&nbsp;two&nbsp;younger&nbsp;on Wednesday as new laws that require using only the international method of&nbsp;counting&nbsp;age&nbsp;took effect, replacing the country's&nbsp;traditional&nbsp;method.
Under the&nbsp;age&nbsp;system most commonly used in&nbsp;South&nbsp;Koreans' everyday life, people are deemed to be a&nbsp;year&nbsp;old at birth and a&nbsp;year&nbsp;is added every Jan. 1.
The country has since the early 1960s used the international norm of calculating from zero at birth and adding a&nbsp;year&nbsp;on every birthday for&nbsp;medical and legal documents. But many&nbsp;South&nbsp;Koreans&nbsp;continued to use the&nbsp;traditional&nbsp;method for&nbsp;everything else.
In December,&nbsp;South&nbsp;Korea passed laws to scrap the&nbsp;traditional&nbsp;method and fully adopt the international standard.
"We expect legal disputes, complaints and social confusion that have been caused over how to calculate&nbsp;ages will be greatly reduced," Minister of Government Legislation Lee Wan-kyu told a briefing on Monday.
According to a government survey conducted in September 2022, 86% of&nbsp;South&nbsp;Koreans&nbsp;said they would use the international&nbsp;age&nbsp;in their everyday life when the new laws took effect.
"I was about to turn 30 next&nbsp;year&nbsp;(under the&nbsp;traditional&nbsp;Korean&nbsp;age&nbsp;system) but now I have some more time earned and I love it," Choi Hyun-ji, a 27-year-old office worker in Seoul, said.
"It's just great to feel like getting&nbsp;younger," Choi added.
Another&nbsp;age&nbsp;system exists in&nbsp;South&nbsp;Korea for&nbsp;conscription, school entrance and calculating the legal&nbsp;age&nbsp;to drink alcohol and smoke: a person's&nbsp;age&nbsp;is calculated from zero at birth and a&nbsp;year&nbsp;is added on Jan. 1. Officials said that method would remain for&nbsp;the time being.
(Reporting by Soo-hyang Choi, Minwoo Park and Daewoung Kim; Editing by Gerry Doyle)

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South Koreans become a year or two younger as traditional way of counting age scrapped