Following last week’s historic meeting between North and South Korean leaders, North Korea has pledged to change its time zone to match the South, the BBC reports. On Saturday, North Korea will move its clocks forward by 30 minutes. KCNA news agency said this is “the first practical step” to “speed up the process for the North and the South to become one.”
The two bordering countries have been on different time zones since North Korea introduced the 30 minute lag in 2015 in protest of the “wicked Japanese imperialists” who changed the clocks on the Korean peninsula to match Tokyo while they ruled the region from 1910 to 1945. South Korea had also changed its clocks to move away from Japanese time in the 1950s, but eventually reverted back to Japan’s time zone in the 1960s.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and South Korean president Moon Jae-in met for the first time in over a decade on April 27 to discuss the possibility of denuclearizing the peninsula and improving relations between the two countries. The two leaders signed a peace accord and officially ended the Korean War, which started in 1950.
In a wildly unlikely twist, Moon recently heaped praise on Donald Trump for the historic meeting, saying he would win the Nobel Peace Prize for his recent efforts in helping to end North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. That sounds like monumentally a huge stretch, but, sure, buddy, that’s not even the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard today.
Speaking of Trump, the president told reporters Friday that he had already set a date and location for his own meeting with Kim Jong-un. These details are to be announced “soon,” per the BBC.
I wonder if Kim Jong-un will remember when Trump called him “short and fat,” or when Trump insinuated he had a “bigger and more powerful” nuclear button than Kim Jong-un did. (He had to be alluding to dick size, though, right? I mean, come on.) Truly exciting stuff!
