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

Re:not the only coutry

[Cigaes]

France is in the same time zone as most of Europe, from Spain (9.3W-3.3E) to Macedonia (20.5E-23.0E). Why should it want to be on the same time zone as the UK, which nowadays is part of America? The French lifestyle is already shifted towards late hours: summertime UTC+2 makes the daytime better matched to it, and would do so even in winter. UTC+3 would probably be even better, in fact.

Re:It's a move for isolation

[tlhIngan]

Now there's an odd half-hour difference with both land neighbours. On the other hand, now DPRK will have an integer-hours difference between its times and those in India, Iran and Afghanistan.

And Newfoundland. The Labrador part of the province is at UTC-4, while the Newfoundland half is UTC-3.5.

And you wonder why Canadians always treat Newfies as different.

Incidentally, yes, that province was the source for both dog breeds, and apparently, the names got switched around - what we know as the Labrador Retriever was originally the Newfoundland, and vice-versa. Then again, easier to say a Lab than Newfie, I suppose.

Re:You go little Un...

[ultranova]

The world will deride him for doing stupid things, but what matters is how the North Korean's perceive it. You can bet they all praise "Dear Leader" for his strong defiance of the Imperialist Japan and most will actually believe what they are saying.

Countries like North Korea are like nation-sized McDonald's restaurants: none believe the corporate bullshit, and the management knows perfectly well they don't, but everyone play their roles anyway while the clown in charge rakes in the profits. It's a little piece of Hell on Earth.