North Korea goes back to the future! Country winds its clocks forward 30 minutes in ‘first practical reunification step with South Korea’
Kim Jong-un had said he found it a ‘painful wrench’ to see clocks at the summit with South Korea showing different times for the two countries, and sees this as a step towards reunification, North Korean state media said
North Korea went forward in time by 30 minutes on Saturday, state media said, to match its clocks with those of the South following last week’s inter-Korean summit.
Leader Kim Jong-un promised the move during the meeting at Panmunjom in the Demilitarized Zone that divides the peninsula, when he and the South’s President Moon Jae-in pledged to pursue denuclearisation and a peace treaty.
“The time-resetting is the first practical step taken after the historic third north-south summit meeting to speed up the process for the North and the South to become one,” said the official KCNA news agency.
In Panmunjom, Kim had said he found it a “painful wrench” to see clocks at the summit venue showing different times for the two neighbours, KCNA reported earlier.
Kim expressed “his resolution to unify the two times ... as the first practical step for national reconciliation and unity”, it said, and the North’s parliament on Monday adopted a decree to put the move into effect from Saturday.
Seoul welcomed the decision as a “symbolic move” towards better inter-Korean ties.
North and South are now vastly different societies, one a democratic member of the OECD club of developed countries, and the other an impoverished, hereditary one-party state left isolated by its pursuit of nuclear weapons.