Hello Nayun,

Thank you for the question! Let's have a look.

Here, I personally think 반복하다 would sound just fine to translate the expression "to echo" here. Why? The word "echo" in Korean would be "메아리". Usually a sound that repeats again and again just like when your microphone is echoing sometimes when you go to 노래방. When it is used as a verb in the sentence, it is really saying that this bizarre numerology phenomenon is being repeated (just like an echo!)

I would be careful with saying "생년월일" which translates to "date of birth" in English, because that contains the birth month and the date as well.

If the expression sounds awkward, we could tweak the sentence structure and wordings a little bit:

The government puts it in 1982, Korea JoongAng Daily reports, "because it echoes the official birth years of his father and grandfather, North Korean founder Kim Il sung."
중앙일보는, 북한 정부가 그의 출생 연도를 1982년도로 제정한 것은 그의 아버지, 그리고 북한의 창시자인 그의 할아버지 김일성이 태어난 공식적인 출생 연도를 따라 같은 수를 반복하기 위함이라고 설명했다.

How does this sound? I hope this makes sense and let me know if you have more questions!

Best regards,

Mason U, CMI-Korean
Business Interpretation and Translation in Korean (BIT-K) Instructor

I GOT IT !!!! THANK YOU