Summary: North Korea has their own calendar and now they will have their own time zone that is 30 minutes behind other cities in the area like Tokyo and Seoul.
Seventy years after North Korea split from Japan, North Korea celebrated by creating their own time zone. The new time will begin August 15th.
The Korean Central News Agency describes the time zone as “The time at 127 degrees 30 minutes east longitude or 30 minutes later than the present one shall be fixed as the standard time of the DPRK and called Pyongyang time.” DRPK stands for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. The news agency announced in the statement that “the wicked Japanese imperialists committed such unpardonable crimes as depriving Korea of even its standard time.”
This time change will further separate North Korea from South Korea. Changing the time zone will remove any lasting colonial influence from the country.
A consequence of this change could be on the Kaesong Industrial Complex. “Some difficulties are likely to come in inter-Korean exchanges including flows to and from the Kaesong Industrial Complex,” stated the South Korean Unification Ministry Spokesman Jeong Joon-hee. He continued by saying “In the long-term, it could negatively affect inter-Korean integration, standard consolidation and efforts to recover the homogeneity of the South and North.”
Now the secretive nation will be even more set apart from the rest of the world. Their clocks will 30 minutes behind Tokyo and Seoul. They have their own calendar that counts from the birth of their founding leader in 1912, making this year Juche 104.
Source: http://www.newsweek.com/north-korea-creates-new-timezone-celebrate-anniversary-split-japan-360893
Photo: nbcnews.com