Born in January or February? How Ipchun sets your Korean zodiac sign

Why do people give different signs? Calendar year, Lunar New Year, and Ipchun

In everyday life, people sometimes give your sign from your calendar birth year alone, and sometimes count it from Lunar New Year (Seollal). Saju, on the other hand, generally sets the year pillar (the two characters for your birth year) from Ipchun, and your sign follows the year pillar.

Which standard you use changes the sign of anyone born in January or early February. For saju, use the sign counted from Ipchun.

Why does saju use Ipchun?

Saju describes your birth year, month, day, and hour with two characters each, eight characters in all. Its months are not set by the first day of each calendar month but by solar terms: 24 points that mark where the sun is in the sky through the year. Twelve of them divide the saju months.

Ipchun is the moment the sun reaches 315 degrees of celestial longitude. The first month of the saju year, the Tiger month (寅月), starts at that moment, so the year starts there too. Your year pillar changes at Ipchun, and because your zodiac animal is the lower character of the year pillar, your animal changes with it.

Lunar New Year follows the moon, so its date moves a lot from year to year. Ipchun follows the sun, so it always lands in early February. Saju reads the flow of the seasons through the sun's movement, which is why it uses Ipchun.

Ipchun dates and times, 2018 to 2028

The Ipchun times below are the values published by the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI) through its special-day information service on data.go.kr, in Korea Standard Time. Your sign changes from that minute. Lunar New Year dates follow the Korean calendar.

You can see all 24 solar term times for every year from 2000 to 2028 in the solar term tables.

How to check your sign from your birth date

What you need to check depends on your birth date. The rules below cover 2000 to 2028, when Ipchun always fell on February 3 or 4.

1. Born January 1 to February 2: you always have the previous year's sign. Someone born on January 20, 2027 is a Fire Horse (丙午), the sign of 2026.
2. Born February 3 or 4: compare your birth time with the Ipchun time in the table. Before it, you have the previous year's sign. At or after it, you have the new year's sign.
3. Born February 5 or later: you have that year's sign.

Examples of births around Ipchun

When a few minutes decide the sign

Ipchun in 2027 is at 10:46 a.m. on February 4. Someone born at 10:40 a.m. that day is a Fire Horse of 2026. Someone born at 10:50 a.m. is a Fire Goat of 2027. Only ten minutes apart, but Ipchun falls between them, so their year pillar and sign differ.

When the saju sign and the everyday sign differ

Someone born on February 5, 2024 was born after Ipchun (5:27 p.m. on February 4), so in saju they are a Wood Dragon. But Lunar New Year that year was February 10, so in everyday Korean usage they are still a Water Rabbit.

Someone born on February 10, 2026 is similar. In saju they are a Fire Horse, because Ipchun has passed. By Lunar New Year (February 17), they are still a Wood Snake.

When both standards agree

Someone born on January 30, 2027 was born before Ipchun (February 4) and before Lunar New Year (February 7), so by either standard they are a Fire Horse.

If you hear two different signs, neither is a mistake. They come from different standards. For saju, use the sign counted from Ipchun.

If you were born on the day of Ipchun

If you were born within a few minutes of Ipchun, four things can change the result.

• How exact your birth time is: if your birth record rounds to 5 or 10 minutes, it can be impossible to say which side of the line you fall on.
• Where the solar term times come from: some services use KASI's published values, others use their own calculations or printed almanac tables. These can differ by a few minutes.
• Whether you were born during daylight saving time: Korea used daylight saving time in 1948 to 1951, 1955 to 1960, and 1987 to 1988. Using a time from those years as is puts it off by an hour.
• Whether you know your birth time at all: without it, you cannot tell whether you were born before or after Ipchun. Which time a service assumes in that case is its own choice, not a rule of saju.

That is why people born right around Ipchun sometimes get a different sign and year pillar from different saju services.

How SAJUDORIM calculates it

SAJUDORIM compares your birth time with that year's Ipchun to the minute to set your year pillar and sign. For 2000 to 2028 it uses KASI's published values, and for other years it uses astronomical calculation. When checked against the published values, SAJUDORIM's calculated times differed by up to about 12 minutes, so if you were born within that range, the result screen tells you so. Births during daylight saving time are converted to standard time before the calculation.

When the birth time is unknown, SAJUDORIM uses noon of that day as a temporary reference. If you were born on the day of Ipchun, your actual birth time can change your sign, so it is worth finding out even roughly when you were born.

FAQ

When is Ipchun in 2026?

Ipchun in 2026 is at 5:02 a.m. on February 4, Korea Standard Time. In saju, the Fire Horse year (丙午) starts from that minute.

If I was born in January, is my saju sign always the previous year's?

Yes. Ipchun always comes in early February, so anyone born in January has the previous year's year pillar and sign in saju.

What is my sign if I was born before Lunar New Year?

Saju counts from Ipchun, not Lunar New Year. If Ipchun had passed when you were born, you have the new year's sign even before Lunar New Year. For example, someone born on February 5, 2024 was born before Lunar New Year (February 10) but after Ipchun, so their saju sign is the Wood Dragon.

I only know my birthday on the lunar calendar. How do I check?

Convert your lunar birthday to the solar (Gregorian) date first, then compare it with that year's Ipchun. A birthday in the first lunar month can still fall before Ipchun on the solar calendar, so the lunar date alone cannot tell you your sign.

If my sign changes, does my saju reading change too?

Yes. Saju describes your birth year, month, day, and hour with two characters each, eight in all. Ipchun changes the characters for both the year and the month, so two people born on the same day just before and just after Ipchun can differ in four of their eight characters, and the reading built on them differs too.

Related reading

• Can you read saju without knowing your birth time?
• How are the eight characters of saju calculated?
• Why do saju sites give different month pillars for births near a solar term?
• Solar term times for 2026