North Korea Creates Its Own Time Zone
While we’ve all known that North Korea is in its own world, they’ve officially proven it now by creating their very own time zone. According to reports, on August 15th, which is the 70th anniversary of the country’s liberation from Japan at the end of WWII, North Korea will set their clocks back by 30 minutes to “Pyongyang time.” This will officially establish an entirely new time zone simply by resetting their clocks to GMT+08:30, which is what it was before Japanese colonization.
As if the country wasn’t already isolated enough, this should help to isolate them even further. The change places North Korea 12.5 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time and takes their time out of sync with Japan and South Korea. This could cause some problems, though. For instance, “could have negative effects on inter-Korean integration in the long-term” Jeong commented. Nonetheless, North Korea is viewing this as yet another triumph over imperial history.
