North Korea Is Switching To a New Time Zone

jones_supa writes: North Korea has announced that it is winding its clocks back by half a hour to create a new "Pyongyang Time" — breaking from a time standard imposed by what it called "wicked Japanese imperialists" more than a century ago. The change will put the standard time in North Korea at UTC +8:30. North Korea said that the time change, approved on Wednesday by its rubber-stamp parliament and officially announced on Friday, would come into effect from August 15, which this year marks the 70th anniversary of the Korean peninsula's liberation from Japan's 1910-45 colonial rule.

Comments

Only half an hour

[swimboy]

I'd think to ensure accuracy, they'd wind back their clocks 60 years.

Re:Only half an hour

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm surprised that they decided on an even half hour offset. That's been done before - The glorious Democratic People's Republic of Korea should not be bound by convention!

To counter the western imperialist timezone scheme and it's England-based meridian, they really should be at UTC+8:22:57 -- or rather, UTC should be such that it's PYT-8:22:57.

All hail the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and its glorious leader Kim Jong-un, may he lead forever!

Re:Only half an hour

[Anonymous Coward]

They didn't die. They were carried up to heaven on a winged white horse.

Re:Only half an hour

[Anonymous Coward]

Instead of making Pyongyang the meridian, they should use the glorious leader's real-time position. North Korea's UTC offset would be his longitude divided by 15. Citizens would have to follow his whereabouts to know what time it is, reinforcing general interest into the leader's activities.

Time to update some code

[Sneeka2]

Darn, now I need to update all my timezone related code to handle all my North Korean customers correctly...

Re:Time to update some code

[Anonymous Coward]

I knew you were going to say that.

He said it a half hour from now!

Re:be glad it's only a symbolic gesture

[Anonymous Coward]

Koreans, even North Koreans, have very legitimate historical reasons to tell Japan to FUCK OFF.

And everyone knows the best way to piss off a Japanese person is to be 1/2 an hour out of their timezone

Re:Wouldn't it make more sense?

[Adriax]

Nah. Having that time offset would be admitting someone else is the center of time.
NK is really +0 and everyone else is at a -24 or more offset from them. And it has always been this way since the Eternal President created the concept of time 67 years ago.

Re: You go little Un...

[therufus]

Now all they need is some electricity to power them up.

Wait...

[SuricouRaven]

North Korea has clocks?

Re:Wait...

[DigiShaman]

I'm surprised they haven't made a sundial made out a pointing Dear Leader statue.

Re:13 minutes off, 27 hours per day

[daremonai]

do I have to get an ugly $2.00 haircut and gain 20 lbs in the gut ...?

Admit it, you were probably going to do that anyway, Great Leader or no.

Re:Why can't the world move beyond this crap?

[deKernel]

And that "app" is called .... are you ready for it .... TIME ZONES!

They Can't Do That!

[Greyfox]

You can't just arbitrarily make a new time zone! Er... can you? Wow... I never thought of that... Ok! From this day forward I'm living in Greyfox Standard Time! At the tone, the time will be your output from /dev/random, counted in 64 bit seconds from Midnight Jan 1, 1970. Which henceforth will be the very moment I hit post on this message! Enjoy living in the distant past or future! Experience the excitement of trying to agree when everyone was supposed to get together for the daily standup! Have your alarm clock go off 5 minutes after you set it.... or never! From this day forward, Greyfox Standard Time will be the One True Timezone!