do Korean high school students graduate first or American highschool students?

Question

do Korean high school students graduate first or American highschool students?

Answer 1

Korean students typically graduate slightly later than American students. Koreans are almost always eighteen years of age at the time of graduation (though by the bizarre system used to calculate age, they tend to think that they are almost twenty at the time high school ends). The Korean school year begins in late February or early March and ends in late December with commencement ceremonies usually held early the following year. Hence, while it is typical for Americans to be either seventeen or eighteen years of age at graduation from high school, it is very unusual for any Korean to be younger than eighteen years of age upon graduation from high school.



Koreans mentioning age can sometime be quite confusing and talk about a thing called "Korean age" which only makes sense to Koreans and to those of us who have spent time among them. Being that a fetus spends nine months in its mother's womb (Koreans think it's ten months), upon birth, a child is regarded as already being one. Additionally, rather than upping one's age on a birthday, Koreans all do it together on January first. This leads to rather bizarre calculations. A child born on December thirty-first will be regarded as two on the following day, whereas a baby born on January first will spend the entire year being one and then become two on the following year.



Since a person's age is rigidly determined by the year that the person was born and since the school year begins early in the calendar year and ends at the end of the calendar year, all students in any particular grade are all considered to be the same age.

Answer 2

Although what Alan said is correct, I want to comment on the 9 month/10 month thing. Neither 9 nor 10 months is accurate. 10 months is accurate if you view 4 weeks = 1 month, but obviously that is not usually the case. It's actually somewhere between 9 and 10 months. This is not just something Korean people think (I've heard many mothers in America say 10 months as well, even though 9 months is what people normally say). It's because a full term pregnancy is 40 weeks, and will usually span across 10 months if it's a full term baby. Women who are actually pregnant will go by weeks rather than months anyway. Since there are about 52 weeks in a year, the ~40 week pregnancy is rounded up to conclude that babies are 1 year at birth, since 40 weeks is much closer to 1 year than to 0 years.



Also some additional info, I asked a Korean friend once and she said that in Korea they too count baby's ages by months (5 month old baby, 13 month old baby, etc). It's just not their official age. So while a newborn with a bday of December 31 would be considered 2 years old, they would also be considered 1 month and etc. This is probably just for moms to be able to tell their baby's progress, and just like with us, they stop using the month counting system after 24 months or so.



This isn't really pertinent to your question, Alan already covered all of that, I just felt like adding on to some of it.