Why do we normally round ages of people who are similar age bracket but with idols, a year makes a difference?

bc span of idols careers are much shorter

1 year or 2 is not much difference when your career can be 40 years

Idols barely last 5-7 years

that's because one is looking at the difference between a 17 and 15 for example compared to 49 to 51

in both these examples the age difference is 2 but the 15/17 year old is a big deal since 2 years is incredibly formative for a teenager and not much for the 49/51 year old

That is Korean culture.

Because the West doesn't have age hierarchy, but Korea does. It's in the culture.

I guess because age/seniority is a big thing in Korea and many other places. Even if someone is only 1 year older they get full and total respect normally.

As for fans well fans are mostly young so they treat a year difference as something significant whereas older people are less concerned with age? Or maybe because they’re young they’ll gravitate toward younger idols? I dunno.

Not just idol, it's asian thing in general. We have to use honorifics to someone older than us, even though there is only one year gap.

Quote from Lulu_Key

bc span of idols careers are much shorter

1 year or 2 is not much difference when your career can be 40 years

Idols barely last 5-7 years

5 years is probably how active 2ne1 was their entire career....3 years is a LOT. It took 3 years and Tara went from star to trashed upon.