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North Korea Is Switching To a New Time Zone

Posted by samzenpus on from the best-time dept.

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.

8 of 236 comments (clear)

  1. And by Gription · · Score: 5, Insightful

    No one cares

  2. Only half an hour by swimboy · · Score: 5, Funny

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

    --
    Ask me how the Heisenberg Principle may or may not have saved my life.
  3. Time to update some code by Sneeka2 · · Score: 5, Funny

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

    --
    Bitten Apples are still better than dirty Windows...
  4. Re:be glad it's only a symbolic gesture by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    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

  5. Wait... by SuricouRaven · · Score: 5, Funny

    North Korea has clocks?

  6. Re:not the only coutry by etash · · Score: 5, Informative

    That's where it geographically should be (Greenwich meridian) and it isn't for political reasons. It's not just what you said, but also reasons such as differentiating from the UK.France's time was GMT+0 and it was changed by occupying Nazis. When the war ended, there was a decision to change it back but it was canceled.

    Spain is in the "wrong" time-zone as well due to Franco's decision during WW2.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

  7. Re:Why can't the world move beyond this crap? by PraiseBob · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So if he wants to call a company in Germany, and wonder if it is the middle of the night for them, he would simply have to figure out the sunrise and sunset times in UTC for a geographic region, and then estimate normal business hours?

    Thats sounds much more complicated than looking up a time zone, and comparing apples to apples.

  8. Re:13 minutes off, 27 hours per day by daremonai · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.