North Korea is creating its own time zone

What makes this choice interesting is that Windows 10 isn’t specifically localized for North Korea’s dialect of Korean (which is different from that used in the South, similar to the difference between American and British English) and the operating system’s region menu lists Korea as one region.

But on Friday, the impoverished and reclusive nation took the expression to a whole new level.

The current time on the peninsula – nine hours ahead of Coordinated Universal Time – was set by Japan.

“The Wicked Japanese imperialists committed Crimes Such unpardonable even as depriving Korea of its standard time”, the KCNA release claims.

North Korea is not the only country that has created its own time zone. Japan ruled over a unified Korea from 1910 to 1945, the end of World War II.

A United Nations agency for telecommunications said Saturday it has not been notified of North Korea’s bid to change its standard time, amid rising concerns the move may further isolate the country.

“It could negatively affect inter-Korean integration, standard consolidation and efforts to recover the homogeneity of the South and North”, Unification Ministry spokesman Jeong Joon-hee told reporters.

The move is seen as a tactic to bolster the leadership of Kim Jong Un with nationalistic feelings and anti-Japan sentiments. “His father Kim Jong-Il had executed only 10 officials when he was four years into his rule”.

South Korea will remain in the same time zone as Japan, as Seoul enjoys harmonious and lucrative relations with the global community. If some country changes the time zone, there is no worldwide body that approves or disapproves it.

In fact, South Korea operated on what will be the new Pyongyang time between 1954 and 1961 and the legislature has weighed returning to that time zone again.

North Korea is particularly keen on reopening the country to South Korean tourists, along with pursuing business and investment deals with its more affluent southern neighbor.

-15 MINUTES OF FAME: In 1956 Nepal moved to GMT +5:45 to mark the time the sun passes over a famous mountain, becoming one of only three places to have the quarter-hour offset. The shift means that it is now usually the same day in Samoa as in its biggest trading partners, New Zealand and Australia. It’s more typical for the company to tweak Windows in order to accommodate changes to time zones, such as Egypt’s decision to halt Daylight Savings Time during Ramadan previous year.