It doesn’t really matter who is in charge, North Korea is going to stay strange. Kim Jong-Il pushed the country pretty far, and Kim Jong-Un is going even farther than his father, or at least is allowing the country to go farther. Your guess is as good as mine as to who is really in charge over there. Anyway, North Korea is going to further separate itself from the rest of the world by adjusting its clocks. They can’t change minutes or seconds or hours, but they can change time zones. North Korea is going to change its time zones back 30 minutes, putting itself out of step with the rest of the world. North Korean time will now be set to GMT+8:30 on August 15, pushing clocks back 30 minutes from where they currently are.
August 15 is a momentous day for Koreans, as it is the 70th anniversary of when the country overthrew the ruling Japanese. When Japan invaded, they moved Korea’s clocks up 30 minutes to put them on a standardized time schedule. North Korea is putting things back to the way they used to be, which is not surprising for a country that already has its own calendar system beginning from the birth of the original Glorious Leader, Kim Il Sung. Interestingly enough, South Korea previously was under this time schedule from 1954-1961, but isn’t interested in changing its time back too, despite some proposals from politicians to keep the two Koreas as united as two countries at war can be.
Says North Korean propaganda organ KCNA: “The wicked Japanese imperialists committed such unpardonable crimes as depriving Korea of even its standard time while mercilessly trampling down its land with 5 000 year-long history and culture and pursuing the unheard-of policy of obliterating the Korean nation.”
Image: People
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