North Korea to set clocks back 30 minutes from the South Korea

Back in 2007, Venezuela also decided to turn its clocks to use the daytime more effectively.

Japanese colonial rule over what was then a single Korea lasted from 1910 to 1945. By establishing its own time zone, North Korea would be responding to Japan’s “unheard-of policy of obliterating the Korean nation”.

As of August 15 this year, North Korea will begin running 30 minutes behind its neighbours Japan and South Korea, countries with which it has shared a time zone for more than 100 years.

Foreign ministers of 27 Asia-Pacific states discussed an array of regional and global security issues including escalating maritime disputes in the South China Sea and North Korea’s development of nuclear arms during a regional security forum in Malaysia.

State news agency KCNA said “wicked Japanese imperialists” had “deprived Korea of even its standard time” by changing the clocks during occupation.

The industrial zone was set up by the two Koreas in 2003 a few kilometres north of their armed border, and now employs about 53,000 North Koreans.

“The ROK government is not following Japan Time, but as the Korean Peninsula is in the middle between China and Japan, it is more practical to follow the eastern side of country as it saves daylight time during the days”, said Chung.

“In the short term, there might be some inconvenience in entering and leaving Kaesong”, ministry spokesman Jeong Joon-Hee told reporters.

Predecessors of the country’s young leader Kim Jong-un are not known to have considered a time change, according to Adam Cathcart, a specialist in North Korea and Chinese affairs at Leeds University in the United Kingdom.

A Canadian pastor who has been detained in North Korea for the past six months made his first public announcement from the country’s capital this week, saying that he has “malignantly defamed the dignity and social system” of the isolated Asian country.

Korea had used the longitude – 127 degrees and 30 minutes east – when the concept of official time zone was introduced in 1908.