In a pacifying gesture, North Korea resets its time zone to match up with South

Seoul, May 5: Taking a step ahead promoting North and South Korea’s reconciliation, North Korea on Saturday moved its clock forward 30 minutes, aligning its time zone with South Korea. The change came a week after North Korean leader Kim Jong-un told South Korean President Moon Jae-in that he wanted to unify the time zones to promote inter-Korean reconciliation and unity.

 

The decision was taken into effect at the stroke of midnight. Pyongyang time was reset and applied from May 5, according to an order of the authority of the Supreme People’s Assembly of North Korea. North Korea pushed back its standard time by 30 minutes in August 2015, claiming the move was aimed at removing the vestige of Japan’s 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula.

The two Koreas previously used an identical standard time, set in the period. North Koreans also have their own calendar. Instead of counting from the birth of Christ, they count from the birth of founding leader, Kim Il Sung. He was born in 1912.

The heads of North and South Korea met on April 27 inside the Demilitarized Zone dividing the Koreas.

They signed the Panmunjom Declaration for Peace, Prosperity and Unification on the Korean Peninsula during the first meeting between leaders of the two countries in 10 years. They committed themselves to the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and pledged to bring a formal end to the Korean War, 65 years after hostilities ceased.