North Korea to Create Their Own Timezone; Is Seoul Next?
You expect something wacky like creating your own timezone from the North Koreans, but the fact that politicians in South Korea want to inconvenience their own citizens just to stick it to Japan is even wackier in my opinion:
North Korea is its own world in many ways. Now, it is getting its own time zone to match.State news agency, KCNA, has announced that North Korea will set its clocks back by 30 minutes to “Pyongyang time” on August 15–the 70th anniversary of liberation from Japan.That will reset the time to GMT+08:30, as it was before Japanese colonization.
“The wicked Japanese imperialists committed such unpardonable crimes as depriving Korea of even its standard time while mercilessly trampling down its land with 5 000 year-long history and culture and pursuing the unheard-of policy of obliterating the Korean nation,” KCNA reported on Friday.North Koreans already have their own calendar. Instead of counting from the birth of Christ, they count from the birth of founding leader, Kim Il Sung. Kim was born in 1912 — known in North Korea as Juche 1, making this year Juche 104.The new time will put Pyongyang half an hour behind Tokyo and Seoul. (………………….)
South Korea has made similar moves in the past. Its time zone was set at GMT+08:30 — the new Pyongyang time — between 1954 and 1961.There have been proposals to move it back again over the past few years — most recently in 2013.Defector-turned-ruling-party politician, Cho Myung-chol, introduced a bill in parliament to make the change.He told CNN resetting the time zone is part of regaining South Korea’s sovereignty and getting rid of the remaining vestiges of Japanese imperialism. [CNN via reader tip]
You can read more at the link.
I don’t see the issue here. India’s time zone is +5:30. If either Korea wants to revert back to their pre-Japanese colonization time zone of +8:30, why should that be a problem?