Meet a Korean and one of the very first questions may be "How old are you?" To outsiders it feels rude — but in Korea, age decides how you literally speak to each other.

On The Story Real Korea, we get into the age-based hierarchy behind the question: polite vs. casual speech, the gendered words for older siblings (oppa, hyeong, eonni, nuna), the old "Korean age" where everyone aged up on New Year's Day, and the 2023 law that made much of the country a year or two younger overnight.

— Hosted by Jacob Lee Independent production. All facts drawn from publicly available sources.