N. Korea to rejoin South’s time zone in conciliatory gesture

SEOUL: North Korean leader Kim Jong-un said he would move the country’s clocks 30 minutes forward to unify with the South’s time zone as a conciliatory gesture after Friday’s inter-Korean summit, Seoul said yesterday.

The two countries on the divided peninsula have had different time zones since 2015 when the North suddenly changed its standard time to 30 minutes behind the South.

Pyongyang cited a nationalistic rationale, saying it would return the North to the time zone used before Japan’s 1910-45 colonial rule of the peninsula to mark the 70th anniversary of its liberation from Tokyo.

But Kim promised to change the time zone back during the historic summit with South Korean President Moon Jae-in.

Kim said he found it “heartbreaking” to see the two wall clocks hanging at the summit room showing different times for the two neighbours, spokesman Yoon Young-chan said.

“Since we were the ones who made the change from the standard time, we will go back to the original time. You can announce it publicly,” Kim was quoted telling Moon.

Yoon hailed the move as a “symbolic move” for better ties between Seoul and Pyongyang.

The creation of “Pyongyang time” drew criticism from Moon’s conservative predecessor, Park Geun-hye, for further deepening the disparity between the two Koreas whose bitter division was sealed by the 1950-53 Korean War.