Joining Hands

North Korea Changes Time Zone to Align With the South

Kim found two different clocks “a painful wrench” during last week's trip.

Images of the two Korean leaders shaking hands over the border were seen across the world last Friday, and now a subtler move is bringing the two countries closer together—this time with the hands of their clocks. Kim Jong Un has pledged to shift his country’s time zone 30 minutes earlier to align with South Korea starting May 5, according to state media. A release from state news agency KCNA said the decision came after Kim found it “a painful wrench” to see two clocks showing different Pyongyang and Seoul times on a wall at the historic summit last week. “It is not an abstract meaning that the north and the south become one, but it is just a process in which the north and the south turn their different and separated things into the same and single ones,” Kim said, according to the report. South Korea, meanwhile, has pledged to remove the loudspeakers which have been used to blare anti-North propaganda over the border after switching them off last week.