North Korea will set the clocks back 30 minutes to align its time zone with South Korea’s starting Saturday “as a first practical step for…
North Korea will set the clocks back 30 minutes to align its time zone with South Korea’s starting Saturday “as a first practical step for national reconciliation and unity,” the North’s state media said Monday.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said it was “a painful wrench” to see two clocks showing different Pyongyang and Seoul times on a wall at the summit venue during the historic meeting Friday with President Moon Jae-in, KCNA said.
The time change report confirmed news from South Korean officials on Sunday that Kim pledged to scrap the northern time zone, which was created in 2015 to mark the 70th anniversary of Korea’s liberation from Japanese rule after World War II.
South Korea and Japan are in the same time zone, 13 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time.
“It is not an abstract meaning that the north and the south become one but it is just a process in which the north and the south turn their different and separated things into the same and single ones,” Kim said, according to the report.
