North Korea will set back its clocks 30 minutes back on 15th August when they celebrate the 70th anniversary of Korea's liberation from Japanese colonial rule. Resetting the clocks would revert North Korea's time zone to what it previously was before Japanese colonization. The new time zone, Pyongyang Time, will put North Korea 30 minutes behind Tokyo and Seoul, a change which the South Koreans believe might cause chaos and confusion.
This is one of my favorite news stories that I have read in a while. Apparently the North Koreans see the institution of Tokyo time in North Korea as a sign of Japanese imperialism. And who has ever heard of a time zone changing by half an hour?! I'll bet that will mess some things up.
Adwilk, times zones with 30 minute offsets aren't unusual. In NA, Newfoundland and Labrador are on NDT (http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/canada/st-johns) now. Also Sri Lanka (http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/sri-lanka/sri-jayawardenapura-kotte), United Arab Emirates (http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/united-arab-emirates/dubai), and parts of Australia (http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/australia/alice-springs) are the more widely known 30-minute offsets. Noodle around http://www.timeanddate.com for more details. HTH. YMMV.
I think North Korea just wants to shed off the historical flavor of their time zone setting. Maybe it reminds them of the Japanese invasion. But amid the hunger and economic difficulties, why give priority to such things as historical? Maybe North Korea is just trying to attract attention for the international community to have sympathy to their present plight. But their vanity and isolation will really make them hungry. Their southern brothers are just waiting for a reconciliation which the Northerners are depriving themselves of.
I think a 30-minute time difference from South Korea and Japan wouldn't that be much of a big deal for North Korean citizens. They would need time to adjust at first but it wouldn't affect their daily lives that much.
Some South Korean activists also want their time zone to be changed but the government won't because well . . . there's that "chaos and confusion" they want to avoid. The South Korean president wasn't happy about the change, said they should have been consulted first before Pyongyang effected the change. Strange that they should have expected that. How long has it been since the two Korea's did things in tandem?
I don't think that it will lead to a big confusion. Venezuela also introduced a different timezone some years ago and nothing special happened. The government of North Korea has well-conceived this plan otherwise they won't do it. Maybe they will have also some advantages out of it, who knows. The western media is not providing us every information so that it is difficult to have a real image of what is behind this reaction of the North Korea government.
Esustadar001, here is the rest of the story on the DPRK time zone change. See http://www.nknews.org/2015/08/time-for-change-the-nationalist-logic-of-n-koreas-new-time-zone/ for probably the most complete explanation despite the clear influence of the tightly controlled state media. The stilted language and writing reminds me of the cold war rhetoric prior to the fall of the USSR. HTH. Rant on. One of my decades-old complaints of USA-based media is a failure to recognize there are world news events (other than natural disasters and some conflicts) worth reporting upon. Looking back to international shortwave radio broadcasts in the 1940s and 1950s, the Internet has made news dissemination a bit easier but the instantaneous reporting has degraded the analysis and perspectives of event reporting. Rant off.
